Lawyers, a question if you please: I realize that words have different meanings in a legal sense than they do in everyday usage, but how can the reason why someone's doing something always be irrelevant to the action of doing it? It makes more sense when you consider a guy sticking up a grocery store to pay for Jenny Lee's new braces, but is it always such a hard-and-fast rule?
This is similar to a defendant's criminal history -- his past record is not relevent when determining guilt, but is relevent during sentencing (ie, the three strikes law).