Fascinating little piece at the New York Daily News about a psychiatrist's attempt to measure a crime's depravity, heinousness, or atrociousness. Link.
Thirty-nine states allow juries to mesh out harsher punishments if they determine that a crime is depraved, etc. But there's little consensus about what makes a crime depraved, so this psychiatrist is trying to normalize the system and make results more consistent.
Good luck. Our society can't even agree on fundamental things, like whether killing a baby in a womb is murder and whether pornography is perverse. This guy is going to try to normalize a definition of evil? In a society gone relativistically mad, it ain't gonna fly, unless the courts or legislators mandate its acceptance, which is what must always happen (the government intervening) when society loses its basic moral moorings.
