Comment by SkyBelow

That really depends upon the the reputation. If the police were to arrest a lot of 'very dangerous people', and all you see on the new is that they put the 'very dangerous people' in prison, then that isn't going to cause outrage. What causes outrage is when you know Mark down the street is one of those 'very dangerous people', but he was definitely not someone you gave your those vibes. So you look it up and notice the actual crime, even if it sounds bad on paper, means Mark might not actually be one of those 'very dangerous people'. A single instance isn't much, but across society this leads to questioning a law.

But it only happens because you got to know Mark originally. If he was already labeled a 'very dangerous person' and was arrested early on, there's a much better chance you wouldn't have gotten to know him, and the extent you would question the law would be very differently.

This is difficult to talk about in theoretical, because most examples are obvious cases of bad law (people already recognize the issues) or cases of good law that how dare I question (laws people don't recognize as an issue). People spend a lot of time thinking about a law that has already soured but hasn't been removed from the books, but rarely catch the moment that they realize the law originally soured in their mind (and any real world modern examples that might be changing currenlty would be, by their nature, controversial and quite easily derail the discussion).

Put shortly, those people are only obviously innocent (not deserving to be punished, but technically guilty of what the law stated) because the law was imperfect in enforcement and you got to know some of them before the law caught them.