Edited by author 01-03-2004 12:12 AM
Spoken like somebody familiar with death penalty statistics....

An interesting peripheral note is that many firearm murders of children by children are classified as "accidental shootings". While some truly are accidental, others are not - but it is hard to differentiate the two situations if you have no witnesses and an offender who lies or whose parents shield him from the police.

A lot of the outrage in the first case was because of the victim's age, I believe. It was interesting that so much public anger was generated when both the perpetrator and the victim were African-American.