To the Point

The Death Penalty in America, Evidence or Emotion?

Jury decisions are supposed to be based on evidence, but in the liberal San Francisco suburb of Redwood City, a jury recommended capital punishment for Scott Peterson, even though the case was entirely circumstantial. Nobody knows how his pregnant wife Laci was killed or what the motive might have been. Jurors say they voted for the death penalty because the convicted murderer showed no remorse or any emotion at all. With the national trend moving away from death sentences, why was the Peterson case different? Will it set a precedent for other cases? Should defendants take acting lessons? We hear several opinions from experts on criminal law, capital punishment, and politics and the media, as well as advocates and opponents of the death penalty. Making News: Missile Interceptor Fails to Launch in Test President Bush promised to put a missile-defense system in place before the end of this year, but it won-t happen. Early today, a target-missile was launched from Kodiak, Alaska, but the interceptor based in the Pacific failed to take off. Warren Ferster, deputy editor of Space News in Washington, explains what went wrong, what it will take to fix it and how politics complicates the project. Reporters Notebook: Chile's Pinochet to Stand Trial In 1990, General Augusto Pinochet gave up power to a civilian government, and retired as a senior statesman, with support from world figures. This week a Chilean judge ruled that the 89 year-old former dictator is mentally competent to stand trial for some of the thousands of killings and disappearances that took place while he was in power. ucla Sociologist Maurice Zeitlin, author of many articles and two books on Chile, has more.