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We load the system in favor of defendants as a way of minimizing the chance for error that would lead to conviction of an innocent party. It's to the point where with all the procedural safeguards that prosecuting a capital murder in Georgia - is so expensive that the cost of such a prosecution can consume a small central or south Georgia county's annual law enforcement budget. The incentive, when one finds a dead body in such a county, is to take it across the county line and make it someone else's problem. There has to be a way to safeguard against conviction of the innocent without making it so expensive.

This jury did the right thing here - and I was impressed in the post trial interview with the three members of the jury who spoke. O.J. was particularly lucky in the dumb jury that sat on his criminal case ("The DNA Evidence? you mean that scientific mumbo-jumbo - oh, we disregarded that!"

On February 23, 1996 William Bonin was the first person California put to death by Lethal Injection. His last meal had included two pepperoni and sausage pizzas, three servings of coffee ice cream, and fifteen cans (5.3 liters) of Coca-Cola. It can safely be assumed that Bonin was either a huge Coke drinker, or he just needed 500mg of caffeine to make the most of his final hours... which he spent watching Jeopardy.

I'm thinking that Bonin wanted to play one last joke on the prison labor that had to...clean the gurney...so to speak.