I can talk a bit it seems.
I can tell you I can check someone to find out whether their soul is branded or not and do something about that. I checked Usopp before he talked about it (i'm pretty sure) and guessed it. I thought what it does is killing him at night. When he said whoever did it to him will steal his ability (no idea how he knew that), I thought he has to die at night due to soul brand for this to work. If he wasn't lynched, I'd take care of that. If he ended up lynched, I would waste ability (dead anyway). I didn't know that soul brand thing would do anything if he died to someone else, so i did not remove it.
Tl;dr: I knew Usopp was targetted by hostile role that's trying to kill him. That alone made me hesitant to lynch him
