“I really think that I’ve thought over a lot of cases I’ve written over the years. And I really wouldn’t want to do any one of them over…With one exception,” he told me.

“My vote in the Texas death case. And I think I do mention that in that case, I think that I came out wrong on that,” Stevens said.

At the time he thought the death penalty would be confined “to a very narrow set of cases,” he said. But instead it was expanded and gave the prosecutor an advantage in capital cases, according to Stevens.