I also wonder how the judges and jury can be impartial given the media's unrelenting lynching of the suspects. In any descent "Western" court this would be a serious cause for concern which could result in an acquittal.

No it wouldn't. Every single time the secret police rounds up a bunch of brown people, they run around in the gutter press telling more or less far-fetched stories about how dangerous these particular brown people are.

While that's certainly a democratically questionable practise (to put it rather mildly - IMO they ought to report only that they've arrested so-and-so many people in this-and-that city, on such-and-such charges, and save the speculation for the court...), that's not usually the grounds for acquittal.

Usually, the grounds for acquittal is that the brown people in question have not, in fact, done anything proscribed by the law. And while the tendency on part of the secret police to round up more or less innocent brown people without enough evidence to convict is certainly troubling, that's something of a different story.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.