A challenging premise, human dignity, and "reasoned moral response"

"The premise is that there is a spark of humanity in everyone that is ultimately more defining than whatever delusions, depression, and negative emotions culminated in the act of murder." 

But there is also this: "Clarke saved his life at the expense of his dignity. Kaczynski was furious, and remains so."

And this:

In death-penalty cases, the jury is asked to make a "reasoned moral response" to evidence about the offense and the offender. In federal law, the process involves "weighing" aggravating and mitigating factors. Each juror is permitted to give any mitigating factor whatever weight that juror thinks it deserves. Jurors don't need to come to agreement about what is mitigating and what the mitigators are "worth." A single juror can prevent the unanimous verdict that is necessary to authorize the death penalty.

Now the odd thing: This "reasoned moral response" is given by jurors who already said they were willing to vote for death. Anyone against the death penalty is excluded.

Clarke's task is to create "reasoned moral response." It's not just a recitation of trauma but something more comparable to the work of a novelist. In Paradise Lost, the Devil is the most interesting character, famously. It's thought that Dostoyevsky's best work rose from a polemic waged against the hollow characters of Gogol, whose shells he stole and reinhabited from within, allowing the reader to get close enough so that when murder happens, we sympathize, not with the crime, but with the anguish of the character who committed it.