re: #154 Targetpractice

Court’s not allowed to consider the non-legal significance of the crime or how a verdict will be received, only the facts of the case before it. And I’d argue that this case, like the OJ case, is no landmark case, just the latest one to attract the media’s attention. Before this, it was the Anthony case, with people still convinced to this day that she murdered that little girl despite the prosecution’s total inability to convince a jury of that.

What courts aren’t “allowed” to do, and what they really do are two different things. Why do you think the OJ trial (a simple, routine double stabbing) turned into the longest murder case in the state’s history? Precisely because the extra-legal aspects of the case took over. I’ll say it again: the courts don’t operate in a vacuum. See Justice Roberts and the two conflicting opinions he wrote in the ACA decision. Judges and juries consider policy and social issues in their determinations. They aren’t robots who check their feelings at the door.