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Not implying guilt should be taken into consideration. People have a legal right to a fair trial, if they don't get one you lose the ability to prosecute as the verdict can easily be thrown out in the face of infallible evidence due to a tainted jury pool.

Many times, the law isn't concerned with what you did but why you did it. I could shoot someone in the middle of the street in front of 200 people, however he might have just tried to sink me with a knife to get my wallet. It's the jury's job to decide whether I'm guilty on all the evidence, not on what a newspaper publishes.

This is why in Crown countries the government frequently has the ability to put a press-embargo on a case until after conviction.



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