60 Minutes: Season 49, Episode 31

49 - 31: America's Steeplechase | Bloomberg | The Judge

America's Steeplechase- When filming the sport of timber racing, it helps to know the turf. 60 Minutes' resident horsewoman joins Charlie Rose on the course. When 60 Minutes reports a story related to horses, producer Michelle St. John probably has something to do with it. St. John is the broadcast's resident horsewoman, and for good reason: She grew up on a 400-acre Maryland horse farm in a family that breeds, trains, and rides racehorses.

Bloomberg - Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg takes 60 Minutes on a helicopter tour of the city, pointing out some of the changes he made while in office. In Hudson Yards, rows of commuter trains sit in neat parallel lines, bordered by the High Line. The Statue of Liberty appears to stand no taller than a tourist's souvenir amid the waters of New York Harbor. No longer derelict and abandoned, Brooklyn's piers carve rectangles of green into the East River.

The Judge - Provocative Judge Alex Kozinski says executions should be brutal. So why did he save a mom from death row, even though he admits she may be guilty? Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Judge Alex Kozinski holds provocative views on the death penalty. In an interview with Lesley Stahl this week, he advocates for the firing squad — even the guillotine. "It's 100 percent effective, and it leaves no doubt that what we are doing is a violent thing," he tells Stahl on the broadcast. But look past the shocking sentiment and French Revolution imagery and see Judge Kozinski's broader notion: killing a person — no matter how it's carried out and how legally justified courts deem it — is vicious. "If we're going to take human life, if we're going to execute people, if the state is going to snuff out a human being," he says, "we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it's anything but a violent, brutal act."