I doubt it’s a dream of his and I very much doubt he acted alone without any consultation with colleagues and superiors. Why does any case go to trial? Obviously in the hope of securing a conviction and keeping bad people off the streets, sometimes trials end in a not guilty verdict, even when it seems mystifying that they have (I know you’re not mystified by it, but I am surprised at least one or two of those charges didn’t result in a conviction).
I don't think it was a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water, it looks to me to my totally untrained eye, although I have seen The Lincoln Lawyer, that lumping them all in together was a mistake.
It also looks to me, with my flimsy legal acumen, that HCW gambled with HB's chance of getting justice for a chance to bolster his very thin evidence file.
It's staggering that it went to trial, according to my relatively scant knowledge of the process, but that's what pressure does, makes people and organisations make irrational choices.