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You are falling prey to the common delusion that the more horrible the crime is the more likely the accused is to have been the one who committed it. So for the worst crimes we should just skip the trial and go straight to the execution. This, of course, is the attitude that led people to lynchings. They were trying to express their outrage, a perfectly understandable reaction.

However, when a child is raped and murdered, someone committed the crime. This does not in and of itself mean the accused, John Smith, did it.

The doubts and discrepancies as to whether the gentleman in question was actually guilty have not been reported in this country, so it’s not surprising few Americans are aware of them. They therefore assume the only issue involved here is a cave-in to Muslim pressure.

It is at least as likely he was released so the British government would not have to face up to a second appeal, which it is widely believed would demonstrate they had intentionally framed a man they knew to be innocent of this particular crime, although probably a bad guy in the abstract. Or that they at least fudged the evidence to nail down a conviction of someone they believed guilty anyway.

The Brits were under intense pressure to “solve” this crime and police forces and governments have been known to do similar things in the past.

I’m agnostic on the issue, but people who I respect and who know a lot more about it than I do are not convinced he was guilty.

What I will never understand is the mindset of those who don’t really care whether the convicted person is guilty or not. All they care about is that someone is being punished. This of course means that if the person in jail is not the guilty party, those who actually did commit the crime continue to walk free.