SM,
I'm interested in the discussions you have with your philosophy roomate. However, remember that I am a graduate student in Criminology, Law & Society.
I'm working from a different set of assumptions than you are, informed by the literature within my discipline. Perhaps we can not have further productive discussion until I send you some of that literature, because our initial assumptions are at an empasse.
For example, you keep linking murder statutes to what occurs to the victim. I tried to point out that our laws are more accurately understood in terms of how the perpetrator acts.
The state is not interested in preventing people from being killed. In fact, it does it quite frequently in varieties of ways itself.
The state is, however, interested in restricting that perogative to itself and, hence, murder perpetrators go on trial. The victim is the state, not the person or non-person who is dead.
You disagree with that analysis of the state. I can't do anything about that other than to send you articles from the top scholars in this field. I respect philosophers, and I respect political-scientists (I think that is you, correct?), but our discplines query the role of the state in different ways and, obviously I have a vested interest here, I'm going to go with mine
I also pointed out that public sentiment does not hold human life to be as important as you believe (along with myself, I might add). You then construct an argument that appears to work: given the objective truth of sanctity of human live, it must be bias that veers our laws off course. I'm pointing out that while bias may occur in the public discourse, the laws are flowing from a different set of assumptions--maintenance of capitalism.
According to the articles I have read and would like to share with you, the logical inconsistencies you are uncovering are mirroring the logical inconsistencies within capitalism itself.
Given that, I am tempted to write an article based on our discussion, but not so desirous of helping our legal structure become more robust
Hope you understand, me being anti-capitalist and all that!