Crothian said:
Not really, it was late and the girls were acting suspicious from the point of view from people inside the house.
So what? It's not THEIR point of view that matters. It just flat-out isn't. What matters is whether or not the girls were doing something that went beyond the bounds of normal behaviour.
AND KNOCKING ON SOMEONE'S FRONT DOOR AIN'T BEYOND THOSE BOUNDS
If there was a sign on the woman's porch saying, "Don't knock on my door, don't come up on my porch, leave me alone and get lost," then fine, these girls behaved recklessly. But otherwise, no. No way.
People don't get to just say, "Well, from my point of view they were wrong so the law should decide in my favour." The law isn't there to make people feel justified in their opinions. It isn't there to accomodate all points of view. It's there to provide a set of unequivocal references on what is or isn't acceptable behaviour. And this judge has just sent down a decision that says knocking on people's front doors isn't acceptable behaviour.
It doesn't matter how frightened this particular woman is. It doesn't matter what her medical conditions may be. What matters is that knocking on a front door -- AT ANY TIME -- is doing exactly what you're supposed to do.
If you've got a condition that makes normal behaviour dangerous, it's your responsibility to warn others, to let them know that they need to be careful. If you don't do that, you don't get to complain when people ignore your condition.
Shakespeare had the right of it. The first thing we do is, we kill all the lawyers.