But now we are in the penalty phase. It was thought to prosecute Muhammad in Virginia because Virginia has been pretty resolute in its campaign to execute criminals found guilty in the first degree. To this end, Virginia comes in right after Texas in executions. There was something in the nature of judicial attention given to the public mood after the sniper killings. What seemed an entire region of America was immobilized by the killings. In the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland, schools closed down and people stopped going to movies at night. When the killers were caught, there was a robust call for decisive action, and Virginia was thought the jurisdiction likeliest to put the killers' feet to the fire.

The appetite for justice/vengeance tends to diminish rather quickly. If a member of the group that planned the 9/11 attack were tracked down and captured tomorrow, he would probably be treated with the kind of placidity with which we reacted to the first echelon of Muslim fanatics who tried to bring down the Twin Towers in 1993. The defense in Virginia Beach did not keep us in suspense about the direction they would now take in the matter of Muhammad. So he is guilty, OK. But does he deserve to die? According to The New York Times, "(defense attorney) Shapiro said the defense planned to call witnesses to testify about Mr. Muhammad's impoverished childhood in Baton Rouge. ... As Mr. Shapiro described a scene in which Mr. Muhammad brushed his children's teeth while they were living in a homeless shelter in Tacoma, Wash., Mr. Muhammad bowed his head for several minutes."

The law, to borrow a word that seems to belong to Iraq, is a quagmire. In Los Angeles we see black athletic stars get off after murdering a wife and her companion, and in Texas, a white millionaire who, whatever the complications in the narrative, cut up his neighbor's corpse to attempt to hide it, is pronounced not guilty. Meanwhile, anyone who sees an episode of "The Sopranos" feels cheated if it doesn't display at least one murder, preferably with the victim face-to-face with the assassin. When you are looking at the man about to shoot you, it is all spookier.

There are 15,000 murders committed every year, and an enormous amount of time is spent trying to keep murderers from terminal discomforts at death houses. The disproportion in public attention to the two classes, killers and killed, continues to hobble America.