Wells, like many attorneys who plunge into this protracted and rewarding but frustrating legal venture, is morally and philosophically opposed to the death penalty. Although 34 states have it, there are other reasons Minnesota should continue to oppose it. Several credible national studies conclude, and nearly 90 percent of the nation's top criminologists in a recent survey agree, that the death penalty has very little, if any, effect at all on deterring violent crime. So agrees the law enforcement community. A national poll of police chiefs placed it dead last, pun intended, on ways to reduce violent crime. The chiefs...