>>>>What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?
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>>>>If you're suggesting I care more about the rights of murderers than those of victims, you're barking up the wrong tree. That doesn't mean I think it's perfectly all right for the state to bump off an innocent man every now and again, as sort of a cost of doing business.
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>>>It goes to your understanding of the protections of the accused.
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>>Can you run that by me again in slo-mo? Several different interpretations come to mind and I don't want to assume any of them is the one you meant.
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>It's extremely hard to get a conviction on a capital case. The first hurdle involves the "premeditatedness" of the murder. You've almost got to be able to say exactly what the person was thinking. Memphis has one of the highest solve rates for murder, and many of them are "smoking gun" murders. Even so, there aren't that many that go to trial as Murder I cases. Mitigating circumstances are factored into every case and the end result is only the most egregious cases get to that level. I can't speak for Chicago....


I am not disagreeing with any of that. Unless the do-er confesses abjectly and goes around with an "I did it" sign around his neck, it's hard to get a death conviction. But that isn't what we were talking about. At least what I was talking about. Completely apart from the issue of whether capital punishment is morally supportable to begin with, to me there have been way too many wrongful executions to allow such a system to continue. You seem to consider those a cost of doing business (my phrase, not yours). I think one is too many.