Commentary The transfer of sympathy from the victims of crime to the criminal has been going on for a long time. This transfer is now taken as a sign of broadmindedness and moral generosity, marking out the intellectual from the general run of prejudiced, thoughtless or censorious persons. As long ago as 1828, Victor Hugo published a brilliant novella titled “The Last Day of a Condemned Man.” It consists of the thoughts and feelings of a man about to be guillotined. Horrified by the spectacle of capital punishment, which he had witnessed, Hugo makes us look realistically at the world through the eyes of a man who will soon be dead, not from disease but by order of his fellow men. As authors are inclined to do, Hugo manipulated his readers’ emotions in the direction that he wanted, in this case by omitting completely to mention what the condemned man …