Rationales for this peculiar practice include that the gods are angry when innocent blood is shed and must be propitiated. Another rationale concerns deterrence of second attempts: If the same punishment is prescribed for successes as for attempts, then there is every reason for the offender to ensure successes. Yet another views punishment as purely deterrent and seeks to reinforce the notion that crime never pays. Finally, a last rationale invokes the difference between wholehearted and halfhearted attempts. This present practice, rationales aside, amounts to a disguised form of penal lottery in which punishment leaves something to chance. Under the present practice, if a criminal is sentenced to face the lottery, then if the victim dies, he or she loses the lottery and also dies. If the victim does not die, the criminal receives only a short prison sentence. When the penal lottery takes place does not matter, so long as the outcome is not known until after the crime has been committed. This penal lottery causes confusion, because success is irrelevant to the criminal's guilt, wickedness, or deserts. 11 footnotes.