Federal Judge Michael Ponsor wrote about his experience...

Federal Judge Michael Ponsor wrote about his experience presiding over the case of Kristen Gilbert, a former nurse accused of murdering 4 patients at a veterans' hospital. The death penalty has been outlawed in Massachusetts since 1984. But the veterans' deaths happened on federal property the hospital grounds so federal prosecutors were mounting a death penalty case in U.S. District Court. It is this state's first capital case since the ban. "The experience left me with one unavoidable conclusion: that a legal regime relying on the death penalty will inevitably execute innocent people - not too often, one hopes, but undoubtedly sometimes. Mistakes will be made because it is simply not possible to do something this difficult perfectly, all the time. Any honest proponent of capital punishment must face this fact".