<snipped for brevity and emphasis
Your whole post was terrific and ITA.
Are we forgetting JB's dramatic "gotcha"

rolleyes

question to Yuri, "Do you go by any other names, sir? How 'bout DickTracyOrlando?" referring to his WS screen name. Good lord, this site did crash after that came out in the trial. I remember it well..trust me on that.

Ashton immediately objected because JB's ridiculous question asked on cross-exam was "beyond the scope" of the direct exam, but true to form, JB got it out there to try to cause jurors to doubt Yuri's credibility. Personally, I don't think it had the desired effect that JB hoped for.
In this day and age, I think it would be naive to think BOTH sides didn't peruse sites like WS, each for their own reasons. It was probably one of the smartest things the defense did - they could get a good pulse for how the general public perceived various players. This thread is a good example of why they could have decided George would be the fall guy. People have very diverse opinions about him and he was the perfect target to cast reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. Basically, after we had all of the info/evidence the discussion here was similar to a deliberation. Granted we were privy to a LOT more than the jury, but still...they got to get an idea of how potential jurors might argue certain points.