Since the transcripts are often leaked to the media, even before charges are laid, innocent people can find their most private remarks splattered across the press.

ECONOMIST: Italy��s government

Innocent third parties can find their most intimate thoughts aired in public.

ECONOMIST: Italian justice

This redemption is hard won, accomplished through suffering and personal sacrifice, and at the end we find ourselves pondering how much this sympathetic, strangely innocent soul has lost in the process.

CNN: Review: 'We Own the Night' owns the screen

With the current groundswell of death penalty opposition based on the possibility of executing an innocent person, elected officials may now find some advantage in approaching capital cases (even those where innocence is not an issue) with a greater degree of care and honesty.

CNN: Why states don't confess error in death penalty cases

"As they say, nature abhors a vacuum, and the mind abhors chance, " says Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society and author of "The Believing Brain, " a book on how humans seem hardwired to find patterns in disparate facts and unconnected, often innocent coincidences.

NPR: 50 Years On, Finding Profit In 'Truth' On JFK Case