"In addition to flying in the face of recent findings in similar cases, this prosecution was driven by private interests.
The BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok said this frenzy of royalist prosecutions is driven by acute anxiety over the looming royal succession, given the frail health of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who is 86.
Those prosecutions were driven by the persistence of surviving family members and the painstaking work of journalists and documentary filmmakers.
But there is no real evidence that the prosecutions were driven by a thirst for revenge, except in the case of allied servicemen shot by Nazis or lynched by civilians.
The case quickly became among the most prominent of dozens of prosecutions that critics say are being driven by the followers of Mr. Gulen, 70, a charismatic preacher who leads one of the most influential Islamic movements in the world, with millions of followers and schools in 140 countries.
Prosecutions of the local businesses are driven by the prosecutors on the ground, such as U.S. Attorney John Walsh of Colorado, who has shown little respect for marijuana guidances in the past, while bank prosecutions would be run out of Main Justice, which authored the memo and presumably would be more likely to abide by it.
Loz Kaye, leader of the Pirate Party UK, said the prosecution should never have been brought and was driven by private interests.
To be sure, Schnall's bizarre perfidy doesn't negate the prosecution's revenge theory: Borukhova could have been driven to hire her husband's killer precisely because the wheels of Family Court were turning so unjustly against her.
The prosecution alleged that the Tottenham Hotspur manager was "driven with his back to the wall to lie" when he claimed he gave a sports journalist false information about why over £90,000 was paid into his Monaco bank account.
Prosecution lawyers, however, have said that he was driven to suicide in the face of a steady campaign of harassment by Sergeant Holcomb, including racial slurs and physically brutal hazing.
