I do not think it is possible for a just society to administer a death penalty.

I am not just talking about the racial disproportion, or the inherent problems with deciding who is bad enough, or the risk of executing those who are innocent.

I am not just talking about the disproportion of resources that flows into death cases, leaving others without any standby, although that is significant.

I mean that every person who ever stands in the chain of death is changed by it, and those people—the adminstrators of death—are made less just by it.

The single worst thing I have ever had to do was wait for the ALL CLEAR email informing me that I could now go home because my justice had taken no action and the execution had taken place.

(And I had an “easy” year because there was an effective moratorium for many months.)

If I think about one particular case, even now, twelve years later, I get deep uncontrollable shakes.

I do not think the death penalty is good for us as a society on about ninety-seven separate levels. I think that any just person who administers it will decide it is unjust, or they will opt out of its administration, or they will become unjust themselves.

And in a society like ours? Where our justice system is biased at its core?

It goes beyond injustice.