"We have a history in this country of putting people to death because they were political. In 1887, the anarchists of Chicago in the Haymarket Affair were put to death, not because there was evidence against them but because they were anarchists. Sacco and Vanzetti were put to death in 1927 right here in Boston — not because it is conclusively proved that they killed anybody but because they were foreigners, they were Italians, they were certainly poor, and they were anarchists. And, well, of course, there's the Rosenberg case. People who come into court as people who have been politically radical receive far, far greater sentences than anybody else for the same kind of offense.
"So there's all sorts of reasons to feel angry at the system. And perhaps, maybe most of all, there's the sheer hypocrisy of it. The sheer hypocrisy of the state, the government, declaring that somebody has committed a terrible crime. They've killed somebody. They may very well have committed a crime, but they may have not committed a crime. They may have killed somebody, or two people or seven people, or nine people, or they may be serial killers and they've killed fifteen people. This is the state which has killed infinite numbers of people in its history. And they are the ones making the decision that there are people who ought to be put to death."
