The thing about these articles that I hate is that they all try to play to the letter of the law as if we're playing word games. But in real life, in the courts

The thing about these articles that I hate is that they all try to play to the letter of the law as if we're playing word games. But in real life, in the courts( of public opinion and the judicial ones), where this stuff matters, its almost always been about the spirit of the law. People do get thrown into jail for technicality (minimum sentencing laws are moronic), but this is one of those cases where circumstance and plain common sense would prevail.