“You know why I think we still execute people? Because, even if we don’t want to say it out loud—for the really heinous crimes, we want to know that there’s a really heinous punishment. Simple as that. We want to bring society closer together—huddle and circle our wagons—and that means getting rid of people we think are incapable of learning a moral lesson. I guess the question is: Who gets to identify those people? Who decides what crime is so awful that the only answer is death? And what if, God forbid, they get it wrong?”
