It also highlights the stupidity of the death penalty: the jury is instructed "if you find this person guilty, we will kill them for it" - i.e. an action with n

It also highlights the stupidity of the death penalty: the jury is instructed "if you find this person guilty, we will kill them for it" - i.e. an action with no possibility of reversal or redress. It's an odd stress test of the idea of "reasonable doubt" because of course in reality, there's always some doubt but the level of doubt for "let's irreversible kill a person" versus "let's detain them for life, but admit the possibility extraordinary evidence might emerge which changes our decision" is pretty vast. In a world where the development of DNA testing technology changed a lot of outcomes including numerous capital punishment cases, it's essentially unthinkable that we could continue with it.