Ruth Bader Ginsberg was apparently quoted as saying: "No well defended person receives the death penalty." One of the issues with death penalty cases is that th

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was apparently quoted as saying: "No well defended person receives the death penalty." One of the issues with death penalty cases is that they require special hand-selected judges and juries who favor the death penalty, and they have a very hard time finding competent defense lawyers. In fact, an extension is "no well defended person gets convicted," which isn't quite as ironclad, but still works pretty well in practice. This is actually a good thing. Our system was intended to make it hard to convict people.