Because my great-grandparents were enslaved people, the legacy of slavery was something that didn't seem impersonal or disconnected. That's what motivated me to get into law.

The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics.

That's what's provocative to me - that we can victimize people, we can torture and traumatize people with no consciousness that it is a shameful thing to do.

In many ways, we've been taught to think that the real question is, do people deserve to die for the crimes they've committed? And that's a very sensible question. But there's another way of thinking about where we are in our identity. The other way of thinking about it is not, do people deserve to die for the crimes they commit, but do we deserve to kill?

You can be a career professional as a judge, a prosecutor, sometimes as a defense attorney, and never insist on fairness and justice. That's tragic and that's what we have to change.

The opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.

I talk about my grandmother a lot, because she's an amazing person - not in some dramatic, distinct, unique way, but anybody who is the daughter of enslaved people and who has found a way to be hopeful and create love and value justice and seek peace is a remarkable person.