Word: murderable
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Despite the unusual nature of a Harvard student on trial for manslaughter connected with a murder, many professors contacted say there is little interest among the current Davis Center community in the trial...
...diversity has emerged the staggering intricacy of death-penalty law, as thousands of judges and legislators from coast to coast struggle to breathe real-life meaning into such abstract issues as what constitutes effective counsel, what is the proper balance of authority between judge and jury, what makes a murder "especially heinous," what qualities and defects in a prisoner compel mercy...
However, attempts to end capital punishment must overcome inertia and the weight of public sentiment. This isn't easy. In the U.S., support for the death penalty has fallen from a high of about 80% at the peak of the murder epidemic of the 1980s and '90s to somewhere between half and two-thirds, depending on the poll. But politicians know that a 69% approval rating is nothing to sneeze at. Only one state has abolished capital punishment since the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976: New Jersey, last month. Legislatures in New Mexico, Montana, Nebraska and Maryland appear...
...last time the court descended into the gruesome details was in 1947, when it ruled on the case of an unfortunate Louisiana inmate, Willie Francis. Sentenced to death in 1945 for murder, he was strapped into the electric chair several months later and zapped--but something went wrong, and he survived. Francis recovered enough to realize that the state intended to repair the chair and put him back in it. He begged the court for a reprieve. The squeamishness of the Justices was apparent in the opinion, but ultimately five of them agreed that the equipment malfunction was an honest...
...Bhutto As Pakistan tried to find its balance after Bhutto's murder - citing the ensuing violence, the government postponed the election to Feb. 18 - her party settled on a predictable succession plan. Some would have liked for the leadership to go to a candidate with more obvious qualities than Zardari and Bilawal, such as Aitzaz Ahsan, who led the lawyers' protests last summer. But the PPP is a family firm. It was created by Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who ran the country from 1971 to '77 and was executed by military ruler Zia in 1979. The decision...