Justice requires protecting the unpopular person from popular emotion.

The test of a fair process is what happens to someone no one wants to protect. When feeling runs high and the accused is unpopular, every safeguard becomes inconvenient, and setting them aside feels like moral urgency rather than what it is. Protections that only apply to sympathetic people are not protections.

When you find yourself impatient with process because the person seems obviously guilty, treat that impatience as a warning. The safeguards were designed for exactly this moment, not for the easy ones.