How did the system fail? They got their arrest, their charges, and their trial. The jury is and always will be out of everyone's hands and that is how it is supposed to work.

exactly. However, I do believe "Not Proven" is more palatable than "Not Guilty"; both are acquittals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven

From the Hacker News guidelines:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. . . . If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The way users can respond to off-topic stories they find on the new page or front page is by flagging them, by the way.

Not only that, but there should be consequences for submitting this crap too.