ONLY THE most hard-hearted person could have heard the news of Dontee D. Stokes' acquittal without a momentary flush of empathy for the defendant and satisfaction with the verdict. Mr. Stokes says he was sexually abused by the Rev. Maurice J. Blackwell, believes the system let him down by refusing to pursue his allegations, and asks who can blame him for finally taking three shots at the disgraced priest.

Emotionally, it's tough not to take Mr. Stokes' side. Why should he have to go to trial and risk facing a prison term, while no prosecutor or cop has ever filed charges against Mr. Blackwell? Why, when the Roman Catholic Church has made such a botch nationwide of the pedophilia scandal, should an apparent victim be one of the few people to wind up in court?

Well, the law doesn't address irony, or scandal, or getting even.

The law says it is a crime for one person to shoot another - and that's what Dontee Stokes did.

What's disturbing about this case? Plenty.

For starters, of course, there was the unwillingness of the church to take action against Mr. Blackwell until it was far too late. That set the stage.

But then came the very public backlash of revulsion and fury against the church, which reached a frenzy last spring. That surely proved to be a goad to Mr. Stokes. He was impelled by private pain to attack Mr. Blackwell, but was that abetted by public opinion? Mr. Stokes' contention that he was powerless to stop himself must make us wonder - why, exactly? And why just then, a decade after the alleged sexual abuse?

And here's another context to consider: As The Sun demonstrated this year in an examination of Baltimore murders, an astonishingly small number of cases conclude with a conviction. Juries have taken to ignoring evidence and rendering verdicts that have more to do with anger at the police and courts than with criminal justice. Mr. Stokes never for a moment denied that he had shot Mr. Blackwell, but he said it wasn't his fault, and the jury took his side. He was acquitted of attempted murder and found guilty only on three minor handgun charges.

Mr. Stokes said that when he met Mr. Blackwell last May, he had an "out of body" experience, during which a higher power directed his arm to pull out a .357 Magnum and plug his alleged tormentor. Why, incidentally, was there a gun within reach?

From start to finish, from unpunished priests to wounded victims, this has been a dreadful story. It probably does not open the door to a new era of vigilante justice, though the out-of-body defense is a worrisome one.

Mr. Stokes has been through hell; his likely sentence of home detention and probation, instead of prison, seems to befit the circumstances. But for a court to declare him not guilty is so incompatible with the facts, and with the fundamentals of a credible legal system, that it becomes impossible to escape the conclusion that we have witnessed an inexcusable perversion of justice.