Judge Hiller Zobel's decision to announce the fate of Louise Woodward on the Internet was a unique move taken by a man described by some as a "maverick". He is known as one of the most fearless and strong-minded judges in Massachusetts and unlikely to be swayed by the tidal wave of public opinion. The 65-year-old judge, who is so media-friendly he describes himself as a "lens louse", has acted three times in his 18-year career to overturn jury decisions, twice when he was the trial judge.
A leading Boston advocate said: "He is independent to the point of being a maverick. That is not to say he makes crazy decisions. He will really follow what he thinks the law is and justice demands. And he will not let any form of pressure alter his mind."
Another lawyer told the London Times: "There is no question that old Hiller is in his element. That's a good thing because we wouldn't want a nervous judge, or a tetchy judge, or a shrinking violet, who buckled under all the attention and lost his focus."
Judge Zobel, an amateur historian who wrote a book about the 1770 Boston massacre, conducted the Woodward trial sternly but also with a touch of humour, bringing light relief with a series of dry one-liners.
He ticked off jurors for not remembering remarks and advised them to pay more attention and make notes. He also reprimanded the defence counsel, Mr Barry Scheck, for going too fast.
But he also enjoys quoting people such as Mae West, Winston Churchill and Plato. One of his favourite sayings is: "Just because something is difficult that doesn't mean you have to make it more unpleasant than it needs to be."
His dislike for juries is illustrated in an article he wrote after the O. J. Simpson trial - he said the jury system was "asking the ignorant to use the incomprehensible to decide the unknowable".
In another article in American Heritage in 1995 he claimed the judicial system expects "average untrained people to absorb evidence for days and weeks on subjects entirely foreign to them without explanation".
Judge Zobel was born into a German-Jewish family in New York. He studied at Oxford for a time, served in the US Naval Reserve, and worked at the San Francisco Examiner before being called to the bar in 1959.
At the age of 25 he was parking his professor's car at Harvard Law School when he was kidnapped by two gun-wielding convicts who drove him to Iowa and dumped him. After he qualified, he worked for several Boston law firms. He was appointed to the state bench in 1979.
The judge, the father of seven children from two marriages, is separated from Federal Judge Rya Zobel, a holocaust survivor who ran Ms Janet Reno close for the job of United States Attorney General.