Guilty or Not Guilty

Two very different stories with very different outcomes:

The first involves two very religious parents who rather than take their diabetic child to hospital instead prayed for her as she died. Article here (BBC). Punishment - 6 months for each parent to be taken as one month per year for six years. The judge wants them to "think about Kara and what God wants you to learn from this".

The second involves a texan man who was convicted of killing his three daughters by arson and executed in 2004. It has since turned out that the key evidence used to convict him had no basis in modern fire science and that he was probably innocent. Long article here (New Yorker) but well worth reading.

I don't think that these cases are comparable but both highlight the danger in not using science over folklore. The differing sentences say something about the US justice system and how it deals with religion and also how the poor can (or can't) defend themselves.

There's obviously also a huge amount more to be said about either case but I have to get back to work.