O.J. Simpson, it is often said, showed that money buys justice. To be fair, O.J. almost certainly did buy justice, at least to the extent that a poorer man would almost certainly have lost his trial. The assumption that his trial said anything about the American legal system, though, is more complicated. For every O.J., there are a dozen Martha Stewart’s, Barry Bonds’, and Conrad Black’s: defendants with enough cash to buy some justice, but not exoneration.

Those three won partial victories, knocking out some charges in some fashion or another. At the end of the day, though, they still got the scarlet “G.” When the government is after you, it’s always David versus Goliath. The deep-pocketed David looks a lot taller standing next to your average Joe Blow, and he’ll score a couple more points, but he’s still a midget compared to Goliath.

When a capital offense is involved, though, a couple more points can be the difference between life and death. Humberto Leal Garcia found this out the hard way when he was executed in Texas for a young girl’s rape and murder.

Now, contrary to many reports in the press, Leal’s lawyer was not incompetent. In the most thoughtful of many judicial discussions of the case, a federal judge in Texas explained at length the attorney’s decisions, vindicating many of his supposed “mistakes” as well-reasoned strategic moves and explaining how others were understandable lapses in a highly complex prosecution.

But this last thing is just the point. More lawyers, with more training, more expertise, and, most crucially, more time, would have created a very different trial. They would have exploited every loophole, they would have explored every angle, and they would have done the thousand intangible things that good lawyers with time and ...