Leaving aside the problem with a system where a judge can overturn the decision of a Jury (I have not seen all of the evidence so have no idea if she is guilty or innocent but if you enter a country you implicitly agree to abide by their laws and legal system, however what is the point of having a Jury if the Judge can do this sort of thing?) then the actual problem is the length of time that Jim is spending in prison and nothing to do with the Woodward case at all. It just goes to illustrate, once again, how laws are selectively enforced and procedures slowed in order to punish people who can not otherwise be punished as much as the administration would like to.

Throwing the woman in jail for eight months without her ever being convicted is itself an injustice. She should have been aquitted because of that bit of bullshit alone. Yes the same goes for anybody else who is punished in any way before they are convicted. That aside, you ask what the point of having a jury is if the judge can overturn a conviction. There's no problem with the judge overturning a conviction if the evidence warrants it, if the trial was a joke, or something along those lines. We don't convict people in this country based on what the public thinks of them, and that includes a jury. If the jury convicts somebody when the evidence doesn't warrant a conviction -- regardless of the reason why they convicted them, which may be as inane as "But he *might* have been gay, and Jesus doesn't like that" -- it is the judge's duty in the interests of justice to overturn the conviction. If the judge is overturning aquittals, then we have problems. And I would suggest we lock and load if the judge had done that and thrown her in prison. As it is, I only suggest that everyone lock and load because they threw her in jail before she was convicted. She hadn't yet had her trial, so she shouldn't have been in jail, period. The same goes for Jim Bell, his "crimes," and his waiting 7 months for sentencing. Lock and load.