I will be careful.
It must be difficult to be the one to defend these guys when they are finally caught.
I haven't had a serial killer, but I have had murder cases and have defended a lot of child sex cases. It isn't as hard as you would think. You see, I really believe that you have to make sure the most despised in our society do not have their constitutional rights trampled on and that includes the right to a zealous defense. Once you say "Oh but he's a really bad guy he shot people, he shouldn't have any rights - he did it - shoot him now and save the tax payers money" it's not a very big step to no one having rights. (Not that we have a lot right now anyway, but it's still slightly more than a quaint notion).
Plus, I believe that innocent people are convicted the most often in emotionally charged cases. Someone has to pay for the horrendous crime and people are often quick to say the police are right. The emotionally charged cases are the easiest for the police to cut corners. They have a lot of pressure to solve the case as fast as possible. Sometimes the "i"s aren't dotted and the "t"s aren't crossed, but they say they have their man and everyone is happy.
Do you remember the murder of the Buddhist monks in Phoenix years ago? They arrested a bunch of kids, questioned them for something like 36 hours straight and finally got them to confess. The only physical evidence they had was a cheap buddha at one of their houses. Well, it wasn't long until they found out the kids had nothing to do with it and they had to release them. They had the real culprits, but the case was undoubtedly a mess...I believe it was due to the pressure to solve it VERY fast. So not only did they possibly ruin the innocent kids' lives (which could have led to the death penalty) but possibly made it harder to prove the case against the real killer. In many cases like that the real killer gets away to kill another day
Enough....I'm climbing off the soapbox. You caught me on a day when I'm liking being a defense lawyer
