“Some states have no minimum age for prosecuting children as adults; millions of kids were sent 

  to adult jails and prisons to serve long prison terms, some under the age of twelve”(Stevenson 15).

“Racial integrity laws were part of a plan to replicate slavery’s racial hierarchy and reestablish the subordination of African Americans”(Stevenson 28).

“Stand Your Ground, laws empowering armed citizens to use lethal force(Stevenson 43).

“The Supreme Court ruled in Strauder v. West Virginia that excluding black people from jury  service was unconstitutional, but juries remained all-white for decades afterward(Stevenson 59).

“ Death sentences resulting from judge override were an anomaly”          ( Stevenson 70).

“Arresting someone for coming forward with credible evidence that challenged the reliability of a capital murder conviction”(Stevenson 114).

“The prosecutor insisted that Charlie be tried as an adult, and he announced that he intended to seek the maximum punishment permitted by law. The judge agreed that this was capital murder and that the boy should be tried as an adult”(Stevenson 120).

“ McCleskey v. Kemp, a case that presented convincing empirical evidence that the race of the victim is the greatest predictor of who gets the death penalty in the United States”(Stevenson 142).

“Pennsylvania sentencing law was inflexible: For those convicted of second-degree murder, mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole was the only sentence”(Stevenson 150).

“The State had no physical evidence linking Mr. Mcmillian to the crime, the State had no motive, the State had no witnesses to the crime, the State had only the testimony of Ralph Myers”(Stevenson 168).

“Brutally murdering someone requires the State to hold the person accountable to protect the public, but to completely disregard a person’s disability would be unfair in evaluating what degree of culpability to assign and what sentence to impose”(Stevenson 199).

“State submitted a peculiar pleading to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The attorney general’s motion asked the court to stay the litigation and not issue a ruling because they may have uncovered exculpatory evidence favorable to Mr. McMillian that could entitle him to a new trial, but they need more time to complete the investigation”(Stevenson218).

“In 1996, Congress passed welfare reform legislation that gratuitously included provision that authorized states to ban people with drug convictions from public benefits and welfare”(Stevenson 237).

“State and federal courts have persistently insulated prosecutors from accountability for egregious misconduct that results in innocent people being sent to death row”(Stevenson 246).

“The police had collected seminal fluid and blood, but the state chose not to present it in court and then destroyed it before it could be tested by the defense”(Stevenson 257).

“ The prosecutor admitted that his jury had been illegally selected in a racially discriminatory manner, but courts refused to review the claim because the defense lawyer failed to make an adequate objection, so Tarver was executed”(Stevenson 275).

“The racial terrorism of lynching in many ways created the modern death penalty. America’s embrace of speedy execution was, in part, an attempt to redirect the violent energies of lynching while assuring white southerners that black men would still pay the ultimate price”(Stevenson 299).

“I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us”(Stevenson 313).