I agree with you on principle but not in practice.
The man chose by his own free will to present himself to the world with those tattoos - he put them on his face in places nobody could miss them, to advertise these qualities he saw in himself.
To present him to a jury with his self-advertisements covered up is not an exercise in fairness; it is an exercise in deception. A fair trial does not start by deceiving a jury, and on that basis I would deem it improper.
“The man chose by his own free will to present himself to the world with those tattoos - he put them on his face in places nobody could miss them, to advertise these qualities he saw in himself.”
Sure, but people can change while tattoos are fairly permanent. They may only be evidence of a person’s state of mind at some point in the past, not necessarily at the time the crime in question took place.
In a perfect world, the jury should just disregard them, but this isn’t a perfect world, so if they are likely to be prejudicial, he should have the opportunity to conceal them.
I agree with you too. But what the jury needs to decide is what he actually DID ( or not). Not his prejudices or what he believes or “thinks”. Such is the rule as I understand it - anyway. Yes, I’d otherwise prefer to let him go into court just as he is. IF he’s guilty, he deserves it. But just in case he’s innocent of the charged conduct, he shouldn’t have to face a likely- prejudiced jury ( even tho, as you correctly point out, he would’ve done it to himself).
The only “tats” I want associated with this psycho-hatemonger killer is that of the sound of “ratta-tat-tat” when he is executed by a machinegun firing squad.
Then he’ll be tattooed forever - a holey guy at last.