The bad news is that now we’re destined to hear sports writers that got C’s in science classes talk about how he “got off on a technicality.” First off, “technicality” is a bullshit term invented by people that lost. “Losers,” if you will. It’s a loaded term designed to make people think that justice has been cheated even though the outcome happened according to the rules.

But here’s the thing: Braun’s situation can’t even be considered a technicality in the “he’s guilty but he got off anyway” kind of sense. In law, people sometimes get off even though everyone knows they’re guilty. For instance, if the key peice of evidence against them was obtained unconstitutionally. In that case, the evidence may still prove that they’re guilty, but our society values constitutional protections more than the verdict. And the only way to deter cops from violating the constitution to obtain evidence is to declare such evidence inadmissible. But that’s not what happened here. It’s NOT a situation where it’s clear that he’s guilty and got off on a technicality. It’s a situation where there’s a strong possibility that the evidence is wrong. The safeguards that are in place to make sure evidence is right were not adhered to, so Braun could not have been ruled guilty. In this case, the safeguards aren’t there to make sure evidence was obtained properly, they’re there to make sure evidence is good.