Then, too, "SF is largely a short story medium," in which, as Kingsley Amis had pointed out, the heroes are ideas, not people, and the ideas are often "so bizarre as to sustain conviction only with difficulty over any extended treatment".
Judge Sauls has been repeatedly reversed for taking too narrow an approach with admitting evidence and for punishing defendants too harshly by misinterpreting statutes and sustaining convictions without adequate proof.
In 1950 Hand sustained the conviction of 11 American Communist Party leaders on Smith Act charges of conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the government.
In 1928 the United States Supreme Court sustained the conviction of a bootlegger on evidence picked up by wire-tappers two miles from the defendant's home.
"Anyone following this case must have recognised that if there was a second appeal it may not have sustained a conviction, and that would have placed everyone in a very difficult position.
In 1971, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts sustained the convictions of two corporations whose employees had bribed public officials on a vicarious-liability theory.
The Onondaga County district attorney, William J. Fitzpatrick, who personally tried the case against Mr. Cahill, said his office would fight to sustain the conviction and the death sentence.
The justices in the majority on Monday offered differing rationales for sustaining the conviction.
"But the evidence was insufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt".
Last week, they filed a motion for a retrial or an acquittal, claiming insufficient evidence to sustain a conviction.
