Fear and anger are a threat to justice. They can infect a community, a state, or a nation, and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous.

We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation.

You've got to beat the drum for justice.

Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.

We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.

We're supposed to sentence people fairly after fully considering their life circumstances but instead we exploit the inability of the poor to get legal assistance they need - all so we can kill them we less resistance.

In fact, there is strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy.

I continue to meet stone catchers along the way who inspire me and make me believe that we can do better than we've done for the accused, convicted, and condemned among us---as well as those who are victimized by crime and violence---and that all of us can do better for one another. The work continues.

Your Honor, I just want to say this before we adjourn. It was far too easy to convict this wrongly accused man for murder and send him to death row for something he didn't do and much too hard to win his freedom after proving his innocence. We have serious problems and important work that must be done in this state.