[WS:] I see your point, but in this year and age consumption of what passes for "news" (cf Fox "News" or talk show radio) may be worse than opinions untainted by this propaganda.
I think the problem is not of ignorance vs knowledge but rather of following certain narratives aka closure bias. Humans have the tendency to "simplify" complex and ambiguous situations to put them into narratives with a closure of some kind. A "well intentioned man making a bad judgment" is one such an narrative and in this particular case it is probably based on the Southern trope of a "white man defending honor and property against black savages" portrayed, inter alia, in D.W Griffith's film "The Birth of a Nation" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation . It is possible that if B37 were offered a more compelling alternative narrative she would have arrived at a different conclusion - which is based on the incompetent prosecutor argument offered by someone else on this list.
Based on my jury experience (I was called every year when I lived in Baltimore) - the judge typically asks prospective jurors questions about possible bias, including likelihood to believe or not to believe authority figures, whereas defense and prosecution make hasty judgments based on racial profiles. As a white educated make I was almost certain to be excluded by defense of black males, which was ironic because I was more likely to question the interpretation offered by prosecutors than most "ordinary people." My friends reported similar experience. In one case, a friend of mine sat on jury in which the defendant, who made an illegal left turn and collided with another vehicle that happened to be an unmarked police car, faced a whole host of BS charges, like assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and so on. The jury was ready to convict him of all these charges, and when my friend pointed out the absurdity of most of these charges, they became angry. So at the end, they agreed on a "compromise" convicting the guy of reckless driving (which was plausible) and acquitting him of other charges.
Although I am in principle in favor of the concept of trial by jury, I am also well aware of the limitations of the process due to cognitive biases.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."