The logic doesn’t follow. While I support capital punishment, I respect the point-of-view of those who do not. The last time I debated an opponent of capital punishment, her reasoning was solid and her argument compelling--and had nothing whatsoever to do with 'since all killing is bad, it must be bad to kill Islamic terrorists or convicted murderers'. The author created a straw man when he wrote that, and--since he is an attorney as well as a 'student of Buddhism'--knew he was committing a fallacy. Further, I don’t view opponents of capital punishment as ‘addle-brained protesters’, nor do I lump them in with human shields vacuously unable to draw even the most rudimentary moral distinctions. The author, it seems, is as guilty of lack of discernment as those he so roundly condemns. Didn't the Buddha preach 'Right Thinking'? Doesn't law school teach the fundamentals of reasoned argument?
I didn't go to law school. For terrorism and civil cases, I'll use the preponderance of evidence standard, not beyond the reasonable evidence of doubt standard for criminal cases.