“this obsession with trying to please everybody cannot be done at the expense of individual freedoms.”
It’s not about trying to please everyone. It’s about trying to please people who either don’t understand or don’t care about what our laws mean. Policies have been replaced by emotions. Keeping the angry mob happy has become more important than reaching the right decision. This case is just the most widely televised current example. Unfortunately, what happens in this case is going to reshape a lot of how things are done going forward.
You’re correct in that you can’t please everyone, and these legal gymnastics are only designed to appease the base element who couldn’t give a damn about justice ... I’m sick & tired of the “moderation” myth applied to every facet of society; particularly, it has NO place in a criminal proceeding, where the “compromise” result would effectively be no different from the extreme outcome that the race crowd set out for.