Something just bubbled to the surface....
Back here, I linked to a trilogy that included this post. And, right there in the middle of the middle, was this key statement:
Courts don’t try patterns of behavior; they try individual cases.
Which, of course, is quite true as far as it goes. But!
In the era of trial-by-activism, there's increasing pressure to punish defendants for patterns of behavior inferred from single acts; the logic is that, according to the Great Big Table of Behavior, as expounded by Experts, behaviors A through M all form a pattern, and therefore anyone guilty of, say, F, should also be punished for A through E and G through M.
Of course, the underlying claim is generally that all men are guilty of A though M, but unfortunately we can't send them off to re-education camp unless we catch them at something.
The logical conclusion of this might be: the defendant received a ticket for parking in a handicapped space. The Behavior Tables tell us that anyone who would unlawfully park in a handicapped space would kick a dog, and that anyone who would kick a dog would kidnap and murder a child; therefore, let's go ahead and hang the bastard for murder, even if no child is actually missing.
Which is perfectly consistent with Patterson's statement quoted above: the court doesn't try a pattern of behavior, but is pressured (perhaps, indeed, compelled by statute) to infer the existence of one based on the context-free bare bones of the individual case at hand.
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