I have spoken my own opposition to the death penalty for more than 30 years. For all that time I have studied it. I have watched it. I have debated it hundreds of times. I have heard all the arguments. I've analyzed all the evidence I could find. I've measured public opinion when it was opposed, when it was indifferent, when it was passionately in favor. And always before, I have concluded the death penalty is wrong, that it lowers us all, that it is a surrender to the worst that is in us. That it uses a power, the official power to kill by execution, which has never elevated a society, never brought back a life, never inspired anything but hate. 

There is no, no intelligent reason for the death penalty. It does not deter crimes. That's been proven over and over. It is not even a good vengeance producer. Because the only the only reason you can ascribe once you concede that it doesn't deter criminals, and it doesn't deter them, some psychiatrist say it provokes some of them into creating murders. And so,so what then? Why do you do it? Well, it's the Bible. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It's the old idea of getting even. It's vengeance. It's revenge. It's all of those things. But it's not intelligence. And it doesn't deter and it doesn't help. And it's never saved a life, but it has taken innocent lives over and over.

I tremble at the thought of how I might react as someone who took the life of my son. Anger surely, terrible anger. I would not be good enough to suppress it. Would I demand revenge? Perhaps even that. I know that despite all my beliefs, I might be driven by my impulses. So how could I not understand the society of people, like me, at times like this, wanting to let out a great cry for retribution, for vindication, even for revenge, like the cry we hear from them now? I understand it, but I know something else. I know this society should strive for something better than we are, what we are, in our worst moments. 

We should refuse to allow this time to be marked forever in the pages of our history as the time that we were driven back to one of the vestiges of our primitive condition. Because we were not strong enough, because we were not intelligent enough, because we were not civilized enough to find a better answer to violence than violence. 

Tim Russert: Governor Cuomo, many people watching will say, but Governor Mario Cuomo if your family, your wife and your children were in that building in Oklahoma City, wouldn't you want to take Tim McVeigh's life?

Mario Cuomo: There was a mayor from your favorite city outside of New York City, of course, Buffalo, who gave me a 36 inch Louisville Slugger once. I kept it next to my bed because somebody had come into our bedroom where Matilda and I sleep. And I believe Tim, if anybody ever came through that bedroom window and touched Matilda, I'd probably beat him to death with that Louisville Slugger. Why? Because I'm human and my instinct would be for revenge and I'd want to kill him, I'm sure. And that's the way the parents and the loved ones feel. I know that. But we ought not to make laws that respect our worst moments. We should be better than that instinct. My instinct is like everybody else is maybe worse. Maybe I have more of a temper, but that's why our law has to be more intelligent than I am.