Sometimes, in the middle of an opinion, you read a paragraph that just makes everything else make sense.
So when Justice Nicholson says, in the context of whether it was proper to conduct a joint trial of both of defendant's alleged crimes:
"Second, neither case was more prejudicial than the other or unusually likely to
inflame the jury. In one, defendant knocked out, dragged, threatened, raped, and forced
oral copulation by a young woman who had her jaw wired shut. In the other, defendant choked, sodomized, raped, and threatened with a knife his young stepdaughter in her
mother‟s apartment. Both cases generate strong emotions, but not prejudicially so."
At that point, you (1) know what the case is about, and (2) can figure out the approximate sentence.
And you'd be right.
