Howard Bashman links to Terry Moran's blog at ABC News and his must-read post, "How the death penalty really works."
Death-penalty trials are intense. The ideal of our justice system--that impartial jurors will be presented facts by skilled advocates under civilized rules of evidence and come to a reasoned judgment--is put to a searing test. A capital case (and I've covered many in my career) is a visceral struggle, a matter of blood and sorrow, fear and pity, rage and mercy. I've felt at times covering death-penalty trials that I'm witnessing something that reaches deep into the human past, long before our country was imagined. Something almost tribal, something even pre-rational.
I say this not to make a point either for or against the death penalty. I am merely trying to describe what in my experience as a reporter really happens in a courtroom where a life is at stake, because another life has been savagely taken. As the debate over capital punishment continues in America, it is worth taking a steady look at how this thing really works, at the deep emotions unleashed in death penalty cases, and what they mean for the operation of our justice system.
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