It's burdensome to defend against any homicide charge, but the burden can be crushing when the defense must address not just the charge but unrelated allegations of distant misconduct. Phil Spector is on trial for the 2003 shooting of Lana Clarkson, but the prosecution wants to prove his "pattern of threatening women with guns," leading to testimony that he tried to have sex with a woman at gunpoint in the 1980's and that he threatened another woman with a gun "and hit her on the head when she tried to leave his Pasadena home."

Spector's alleged pattern of using guns and being violent toward other women doesn't tell us much about his role in Lana Clarkson's death in 2003. The case against Spector should be made on its own merits, not on the assumption that Spector probably killed Clarkson because he (allegedly) committed other violent acts at other times against other women.