I caught (embarassed, I wish to emphasize the lack of intention) an A&E documentary on Pamela Smart, the New Hampshire teacher who conspired with her teenage student/lover to murder her husband. The student's testimony at trial was filmed, and it is an extraordinary lesson on how a person with a conscience can murder in cold blood. I mean the act itself, the carrying-out. The decision of purpose is more complex.

What did he do? He cocked the gun, he pointed it at Gregory Smart, then he pulled the trigger. OK? But each act was atomized, and the whole volition was devoted to the small physical action required, not its import, the murder. He could have said, simply and accurately, that he shot him in the head, but he never did, and his brain clearly never issued that order, complex and morally-implicated, to his hand. Instead, it was one small gesture, followed by another.