"The overall message of the study is that our post-conviction system is broken in Texas," said Jim Marcus, executive director of Texas Defender Service and an author of the report.
His obsessive focus on Iran -- not to mention the seemingly irrational calculus that is driving him toward a politically suicidal confrontation with the U.S., his country's most important benefactor -- stems from deep-rooted convictions, a system of political thought and his own perspective on Jewish history.
Now, the conviction that the system must be rebuilt to curb future excesses forms a starting point for the reforms that will come under discussion in London.
His entertaining new book does not attempt a macro view of the financial crisis, but instead proposes to open a small window on the calamities by recounting the stories of some savvy renegades who cashed in on their conviction that the system was rotten.
Now that may sound bold, but I have seen the power and conviction of our system, and when we put our mind to something we achieve results.
The indictment of presumptive elites, especially those housed on Wall Street, the conviction that the system over which they presided must be replaced by something more humane, was a robust feature of our country's political and cultural life for a long century or more.
Diversion, not in the sense of being distracted from what matters, but in the sense of being distracted from what doesn't – the false seriousness of belief systems, conviction, ideology, thinking what it's right to think.
We see one of them in what his death has again brought to the surface: deeply rooted convictions that the system is flawed.
He said the fact that Judge Hittner had overturned the conviction showed that "the system worked".
But he shares with many activists, on both sides, a conviction that our current system is unfair.
In the Italian legal system, a conviction – or an acquittal – is not definitive until it has been issued by the Supreme Court.
