Flutterby™! : Sara Jane Olson

The latest developments in the Sara Jane Olson trial fascinate me. She plea bargained with the prosecutor in the courtroom, walked outside and said "I pleaded to something of which I'm not guilty" because she thought she wouldn't get a fair trial, and now the judge in the case wants to examine if the trial should go forward, if she can plead one way in the court and another outside.

What amazes me is that it's as though Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler thinks this has never happened in his court. And this also brings up similar questions from my recent jury experience. What sort of ethical blinders to judges wear that they think that the law, or the process of law, has that high a correlation to right and wrong? Or are they really moral eunuchs of such a magnitude that it takes a case like this, and a defendent like this, to knock them from their lassitude?