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I think that people forget that sometimes what the public knows isn't what was presented to the jury, often times for compelling reasons. Generally, I think, this kind of evidence being excluded favors the accused, but when there's a everything-but-the-kitchen sink standard outside the courtroom, it's kind of no wonder that legal outcomes are different than what the public thinks should have happened, particularly when people fail to be convicted of crimes that the public seems to believe they committed.
Unrelated to anything in this thread particularly, I do wonder if we aren't moving toward finding that it's really hard to prove guilt if we look at conviction being indicative of guilt rather than the outcome of more compelling theater than the defense put on.
Forensic evidence is more frequently discredited, and eye witness testimony and identification are almost ridiculously faulty. I tend to think that a successful prosecution is going to involve elements of multiple forms of "proof" but if we can later revisit the case and regard the failure of any part to call the whole thing into question, which as KSigKid notes might be a good thing in terms of the rights of the accused, we're going to have to devote more resources to giving the state the ability to re-investigate, store and re-test evidence.
(I don't mean double-jeopardy stuff; but if it's still up for more review, it doesn't make a lot of sense to leave prosecutors in the position of trying only to re-try the original case if more evidence might now exist.)
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