Monday’s session of the Supreme Court also marked the first time in almost thirty-five years that the Court was without Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired earlier this year. On Monday, NPR News aired an interview with the ninety-year-old Stevens, who said he regrets only one vote he made on the Supreme Court: his decision in 1976 to uphold the death penalty. He now describes the decision as “incorrect.”

John Paul Stevens: “I voted to uphold the death penalty. And I thought, at the time, that if the universe of defendants eligible for the death penalty is sufficiently narrow, so that you can be confident that the defendant really merits that severe punishment, that the death penalty was appropriate. But what happened over the years is the court constantly expanded the cases eligible for the death penalty, so that the underlying premise for my vote in those cases has disappeared, in a sense.”