Thanx

I also read the linked articles on the ever-shifting nature of the charges. The details of the current charge must've gotten lost in the shuffle. Mea Culpa

The constant shifting by prosecutors seems consistent with the notion that once someone is accused its their job to get a conviction on anything they can throw against the wall and see if it will stick. This is one of the reasons why they go to such great lengths instead of focussing on other crimes or other suspects when their case begins to erode.

We see this over and over again in cases where someone was later exonerated. That massive resources were wasted trying to get a conviction.

I have a friend who was innocent of an acquaintance's criminal stupidity. But as a teenager facing a new DA out to prove himself, was essentially forced to plead to a lesser charge ( underage drinking ) which he hadn't done at that time, rather than fight the stronger accusation of which he was completely innocent.

Of course, while abuse still goes on in cases involving, say, burglary or speed limit violation; there is no attempt to conflate them with completely different charges, or to declare that review by the fourth estate is inappropriate. When we see a news article about a bank robbery, there's a possibility that someone is being railroaded. But there is an even higher likelihood that a bank robbery occurred.

When we see an article about CP or rape involving a minor, we are looking at things which are not subject to factual review, where the LEOs say "trust us on this one" and where they're on the record as repeated liars.

Unfortunately media consolidation ( aside from creating room for bias ) has had the net effect of turning much of investigative reportage into the repeating of press-releases. I've also seen cases where the local police scandal wasn't broken by the big daily paper of Natl repute, but by the local weekly ad-rag. The bigger paper didn't want to anger its source for press-releases by questioning their legitimacy.

Dante