McGrath of Harlow, Bobert, and Don - I agree with all of your most recent posts.

The reason I have such strong feelings about the wrongness of withholding evidence is that (as I mentioned before) I have sad experience (here in the U.K.) of being on the receiving end of withheld evidence (and of a judge who had already made up his mind).

My husband and I fought a speeding ticket (my husband knows his physics and realised that the camera which "caught" us speeding was set on a curve, which made its calculations inaccurate).

We didn't have a lot of money (couldn't afford a solicitor), but my husband firmly believed that the British system of justice is one of the best in the world, and was sure that we would get a fair hearing. What we experienced was a real eye-opener, and included a number of... "irregularities", including withholding of evidence (of various types) the laws say we were entitled to.

We kept fighting/appealing (against the advice of both sets of parents) because we believed it would be wrong to just knuckle under - even when we began to see just how overwhelmingly the deck is stacked against anyone without the money to make the system work in their favor.

We were found guilty and ordered to pay £15,000 court costs - which we did not have - so eventually filed for bankruptcy.

I know what happened to us is nothing, nothing, nothing! compared to what is happening to Trayvon - and has happened to so many other people. My sense of outrage - for them as well as for myself - remains.

(Note: I've tried to keep my account brief. I have written - in greater detail - on Mudcat about it once before; if you're interested, you can find it in this thread/post.)

But - that is why anyone arguing in favor of withholding evidence hits a very sore spot for me. Overall, I think we all agree that the "system" is not working as it should (to put it mildly) - in the US, and in many other places as well. Even more distressing is that there are many, many more places where it's much, much worse.

The BIG question is - how do we change things so they are fair?