Sympathy for the Devil

Since writing yesterday's piece on the capital punishment debate, another element of the problem has occurred to me. It strikes me that the popular media, of necessity, must be biased in favour of killers - or, more specifically, against the victims.
This is because that the details of most killings - the enormities committed on the bodies of the victims, the agonies of the victim's loved ones - are simply too horrible to be reported in detail, while details of the personality and background of the killer are protected by law.
Thus, it is easier for the uninvolved to sympathise with the malefactor, whose predicament - as he awaits judgement, they can understand (or delude themselves that they can understand).
I can see no way of avoiding this in a decent society - but I do feel we should bear it in mind.

Evaluating the Death Penalty

Richard Ingrams, in his blog for The Independent, wonders how many innocent people would have been executed if capital punishment had not been abolished. It is a valid point, but not a balanced one. To evaluate the issue fairly, we need to know how many innocent people would have been murdered if capital punishment had been retained.
Statistics are helpful. According to the Home Office, between 1965 and 1998 71 people were murdered by people who had been released after serving 'life sentences'. That number alone probably dwarfs the number  of people wrongly found guilty; what we cannot know, however, is how many people were deterred from committing murder by the presence of the death penalty.
The question, pace Mr Ingrams, is still very much open.

Did Old Moore see it coming?

I only ask because the Almanac page for August does actually forecast riots with a racial element. Mind you, in view of the amount of tosh in the Almanac he's bound to have a few lucky hits.