The Court of Public Opinions is a concept mentioned a lot in most of the case studies we view. Today, we saw how the public can influence the direction of a case by giving the Jurors a bias. Pamela Smart couldn't have been tried fairly due to the fact that her case was under a lot of publicity and that the publicity in question was severely biased against her being innocent. That portrayal of her almost forced the Jury to be biased against her, one Juror even said after a trial that there was no defense for her, they had to vote guilty because that is what the public wanted.
The Pamela Smart case was not the first case we have come across that takes into question the strength and place of the Court of Public Opinion. Cases like the dog mauling in San Fransisco and the "Thou Shalt not Kill" case are more great examples of how the public have greatly influenced a Jury's decisions. In the dog mauling case, the couple was also hated by the public greatly because the case was televised and they were portrayed as people without remorse and rather selfish, not to mention the completely irrelevant introduction of Cornfed only weakened their public image to the point that they were sentenced for crimes that the evidence did not merit. In the "Thou Shalt not Kill" case, Bob was just acting completely abnormal for a person whose wife was just killed, even if they were getting a divorce anyway.
When I look at these cases where the Court of Public Opinion had influenced the outcome of a case, I noticed that the publicity of the case honestly just went too far. In my opinion, I believe that crimes should be only publicized with minor details and with the restriction of the mention of names to insure that the trial and the Jury are unbiased. What is your opinion on the matter, should cases be publicized despite the risk of biases forming, or do you believe that the Court of Public Opinion doesn't have the proper strength to influence a case in such a way?
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