alt Hacker NewsThis defendant was convicted of possessing CSAM. Before that fact causes you to lose sympathy for the case, note that almost every significant criminal case affirming constitutional rights involves a defendant who did something unsavory, if not reprehensible.
Miranda was a kidnapper and rapist. Danny Escobedo (right to an attorney during interrogation) murdered his brother-in-law. Clarence Earl Gideon (right to a court-appointed attorney) was a career criminal. It's the same with freedom of speech cases: they often involve jerks and assholes; otherwise, they probably wouldn't have gotten arrested in the first place.
You can root for the right outcome without rooting for the defendant.
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I wasn't familiar with the acronym, therefore here you go: CSAM = Child Sexual Abuse Material.
> Before that fact causes you to lose sympathy for the case, note that almost every significant criminal case affirming constitutional rights involves a defendant who did something unsavory, if not reprehensible.
Not always. Often times prosecutors pick cases with bad fact patterns to be test cases when they want to attack a right. A recent example is Biden DoJ choosing to take US v Rahimi to SCOTUS in an attempt to wheel back the NYSRPA v Bruen decision.
Ensuring due process before the law, regardless of the charge, is of course the whole reason for having a bill of rights in the first place.
Bad facts make for bad law
I’d take it one step further and say they deserve to have their rights respected as well and the outcome pursued by law to reinforce the ethics undergirding law. It seems like this person was a target and they would have eventually got him — this was simply an expedient shortcut.