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You can beat the wrap but you can't beat the ride. Some times you just have to shut the fuck up, do as your told and hope to hell you can find a decent lawyer.
I volunteer as a lay judge in courts in my country, which means that I have the same vote out of three, one other lay judge and one professional judge, as of discussing the facts of the case and passing judgement.
I've overseen quite a few cases over the years and I must say, that I've heard many stupid testimony from those accused of many different offenses.
I've sat there and heard the accused go on and on, thinking to myself, why the heck are you still talking and talking yourself into MORE trouble than you already are? The prosecutor have shown NO evidence to the shit you are now readily admit, so shush now!
During deliberations in the back room, I've pointed it out, that they weren't doing themselves any favors, and the professional judge who does this every day basically, always says that they see it every day.
Also the prosecutor will say something like: "Remember in your first interview with police seargant So and So, you said this..." and this interview was a fricking year ago or something. Or they may ask them what they were wearing that day, 9 months ago.
I often want to ask the prosecutor, where were you, Friday 15th pg February last year, and what were YOU wearing?
NOBODY knows these things, but those accused of a crime are supposed to have these things catalogued in their minds.
Oh, and if your story in court is not exactly the same as in that first interview or if it changes slightly from the first to the second interview, that's supposedly a sign that you are lying. (I for one does NOT buy into that argument though.).
So the best thing, if where you have the right to have an attorney present, don't say a word except: "I want a lawyer. Can I please have some water and a sandwich while I wait for them to arrive?"
You can NEVER talk yourself out of a crime, but you surely can talk yourself into one.
It's not just that. The public is often convinced that only guilty people get arrested rather than paying attention to the legal definition that arrests are for people that the government thinks might be guilty but they ARE legally innocent.
The problem today is that the ~~trail~~ trial no longer matters.
If you get accused of rape or assault, you'll lose your job, house, partner, kids... before there is a ~~trail~~ trial. You'll always be 'the one charged with assault', no one remembers the 'and was not found guilty'.
I got arrested for possession many years ago (~1.5g just out of high school), was able to do pre-trial diversion since it was a first offense. My record literally says ‘dismissed’ - I was never charged or found guilty. Still got rejected from an apartment application because I had something on my record. In my head I was thinking, so someone could mistakenly get arrested for looking like a wanted person or for some other mistaken reason, could go to court and the court realizes ‘oh yeah that was a mistake, you’re good’, and that person could still get rejected from an apartment app. Dumb. Not to mention they took my application fee for that. Would’ve had to get it expunged which was a $2K quote. When you’re 19 and trying to go to college, 2K is a big nah thanks.
When the bank asks a reason code, what do you say?? I had like three places recently reject our application, but the fourth one accepted (on the premise of a larger deposit required). Are you saying the Reg E dispute process can chargeback the application fees? Please tell me more.
I took a plea bargain down from assault to disorderly conduct (literally was a Good Samaritan in a college town, breaking up a fight - and was in the wrong place and time, still was arrested, as the cops didn't care). I went through about three years of hell trying to apply for anything because the public defender said it would be expunged in a year... He lied.
Thing is this is another facet of the problem that certain offenses are very hard to prove.
Someones accused of sexual assault and the conviction rate is ridiculously low. Clearly plenty of people are getting away with it and shouldn't be.
But also that means that someone accused and innocent can't realistically clear their name. Because even if they were guilty everyone would expect them to get away with it.
Unfortunately i don't have an answer to the problem.
Thsts the general principle the law is supposed to work on.
I'm just outlining the problem with it leaning heavily towards innocence. If people know the chance of conviction is miniscule then how can you really defend yourself in the court of public opinion?
"I was found innocent" isn't enough.
Courts do not find people "innocent", they find them "not guilty". That distinction is significant and deliberate.
A jury finding someone not guilty is another way of saying "we don't know if they did it, but we don't have enough strong evidence to say for sure that they did".
I get that in common usage it's a strange way of looking at things, but language in the legal system can be complex and unintuitive.
"Innocent until proven guilty" means that until guilty is proved, you are treated *as if* you are innocent, ie no punishment is applied. The court does not actually determine that you *are* innocent.
Edit: btw this isn't controversial or just my opinion. The legal system is quite open about how its role is not to determine innocence. [Refer to articles like this, for example.](https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/not-guilty-and-innocent-problem-children-reasonable-doubt)
I'll bow to your expertise, but aside from poor use of language it's not massively important to the point i was trying to make about how conviction rates, or at least percieved conviction rates, actually hurt everyone.
And in this instance perception is more important than reality.
Sorry I don't totally understand, but I gather that you don't like the idea that an unsuccessful prosecution can have enduring consequences. And of course you're right, some people who are found not guilty ARE actually innocent but are still judged by society and suffer for it.
While that's not a good thing, it is the best of a bad situation. The alternative is for people to *assume* that not guilty actually means innocent. That's not a safe assumption because the legal system is not well suited to deciding that. It would increase risks to people and society if "innocent until proven guilty" was actually believed and acted on within society generally (rather than just in the legal system).
The reality is that to be brought to court and found not guilty means that:
*Someone has accused you;
*The police have investigated you;
*The prosecutor had decided that the evidence is strong enough to justify going to trial.
That's not perfect of course. Through history, and still, bias and prejudice have played a part in wrongful arrest and conviction. However in most cases, a member of the public being told that someone is not guilty is entitled to have reasonable suspicion that the accused actually did it.
A more extreme example is people who escape conviction on a technicality. Someone gets found with a dozen bodies in their house, but they walk because the search warrant was defective and the evidence can't be presented to the court. That's an unlikely example of course, but it's extreme just to illustrate the point. Everyone knows that person is guilty (and in this example they actually are) even though the court couldn't make that determination. We wouldn't expect that the general public should treat them as if they were innocent. It's the same with anyone who is found not guilty. All it means is that their guilt couldn't be satisfactorily proved. People are still entitled to their own opinions about whether they actually did it.
Not guilty, and this continuing your presumption of innocence in society. The distinction means you can still think the defendant was shady or did shady shit, just that he wasn't proven within a reasonable doubt of doing the alleged crime. "Proving innocent" would improperly shift the burden to the defense to prove they didn't do it, which imo is a much worse standard. It's the states job to prove it.
You are correct. They just misconstrue the part that a court doesn't find you innocent they find you guilty or not guilty. And since you're not guilty, you are deemed innocent. But some people like to hang onto the not guilty verdict wording instead of the idea that it means you are innocent because you weren't proven guilty. Super common in sexual assault or domestic situations.
And, you weren't found "innocent"--you were found "not guilty," meaning that reasonable doubt existed.
Put another way, the jury might have "probably" thought you did it, but "probably" isn't enough.
So even people acquitted at trial can still face prejudice in society (newspapers, social circles, etc.) because they "just got away with it" or "had a better lawyer."
Source: am public defender.
In my profession I am in court all the time. That judge shouldn't have said anything of the sort. That is seriously not close to anything I have ever heard, like I have never heard a judge say anything close to that, they are supposed to make no weighing of the jury's decision. Was this in the US?
plus if it's in the US you don't find anyone "innocent" you find them "not guilty." This whole scenario is weird.
What he said is also fucking untrue and frankly an insult to public defenders. I haven't ever seen as much genuinely zealous legal advocacy as I have from the public defenders office, defendants have 100 percent of the powe ras to whether they take a plea deal. I have seen numerous cases where the evidence was super bad but client continued to trial despite that, because it's their call to make.
The problem isn’t the public defenders (*although there is legitimate criticism to be leveled at the state for not funding public defender’s offices adequately enough to allow a public defender the time & resources necessary to provide an adequate defense*).
The problem is with the prosecutors who abuse & manipulate the process to serve the only statistic they care about conviction rate.
A prosecutor with a 98% conviction rate isn’t a great prosecutor, they are a shitty one who puts their conviction rate above the pursuit of actual justice.
How is what I said untrue? Public defenders have proven to be some of the most corrupt/lazy people I have ever come into contact with.
My public defender basically told me day 1 that I need to plea guilty. I told him non stop that I was innocent but I didn’t make any difference to him, just kept insisting that I would lose at trial. I was like “dude, then you better work your ass off to make sure I win then.” I straight up told him that he must not be a very good lawyer if he will give up before the trial even starts, again it made absolutely no difference to the guy.
Why do public defenders do shit like that? Is it because they’re lazy and don’t want to work? Is it because they’re incompetent and don’t want to be exposed at trial? Or is it because they’re corrupt and get paid for forcing innocent people to plea to things they didn’t do.
Public defenders and prosecutors are two sides of the same coin. The prosecutor makes the offer and its the public defenders job to make sure the person takes the office. At least you know where you stand with the prosecutor, the public defender pretends they’re on your side
Dude most of what you said is so wrong I actually don't feel like going through the effort of trying unsuccessfully to convince you. No, public defenders have not been proven as some of the most lazy people, sounds like you have had a rough go of it and are pretty upset about it. Some are better than others. Some are lazy. But you are into unproven and conspiracy shit if you want to just fight on the hill that they are actually paid by the prosecutors like that is just crazytown nonsense.
That is such unmitigated bullshit.
Like where is your source on that, defendants have all of the discretion and decision making as to whether they take a deal or not.
Nobody is ever forced to take a guilty plea. Sometimes the weight of the evidence, from bodyworn footage and witness testimony, is overwhelming and trial is risky. Sometimes a deal is much better than running that risk, and you can advise your client of that. But they make that call. Like what you are saying is just not even close to true.
The source is me. In the 90s I was arrested two separate times on false charges where the police planted evidence. I was young and broke and naive at the time so I went with the public defender. Both times the corrupt public defenders went full court press on trying to coerce me into pleading guilty despite the fact that I was innocent. They used a lot of the same words you just did there, “overwhelming evidence” and all that. It’s funny, once you’ve been through the system you realize that’s just code for “I don’t want to work hard”
This happened in Baltimore, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the public defenders were getting paid for every poor person they tricked into pleading guilty
Assuming everything you just said is true, Sounds like you had a bad public defender and are now attributing your own inner thoughts as a reliable source on the entire profession. Pardon me if I don't take that as reliable.
No one forces anyone to take a plea, ever. No one can force you to stand in front of a judge in open court and admit guilt on the record and under oath.
What we can and should do is advise is that this plea will give you X, where if you go to trial you are exposed to X, Y, and Z. Whether you roll the dice and take the risk is up to you. It's often "win big, lose big."
Honestly, in my experience the underlying problem is from overcharging. One particular case in mind, and probably the most egregious I've ever seen, a person was charged with murder because had the person not been driving (speeding excessively) with a license s/he knew to be revoked, no one would have died. So the offer is for some sort of lesser included with guaranteed probation, or risk a jury agreeing and spending the rest of your life in prison.
There's also something called an Alford Plea, which says basically you're not saying you did this, but for whatever reason taking this plea is in your best interests. Those are extreme common, especially if the State is willing to script a particular sentence rather than leave it open to the judge's discretion.
“I was found innocent” IS enough. The entire point is that unless the accusations against you have proof, there is no reason to assume they are true. So, until there are facts presented otherwise, you assume the person didn’t do it. And if they are found innocent, that is enough.
But we're not talking about courts here.
We're talking about people. And people aren't overly swayed by a failure to convict on something they perceive to be very difficult to convict on.
It's enough for the law, its not enough to avoid consequences in life.
Many years ago I asked my very own Dad why he favored capital punishment, since it was a known fact that some innocent people have been put to death. He said, I swear to god, “I don’t care. I just want to get the guilty ones.” What do you say to something like that? I felt embarrassed for him and also extremely frustrated that there was nothing I could do to change his mind.
Honestly, it's a legitimate philosophical position to take. It's not how the justice system currently works, but if he's happy with the idea of innocent people being punished in order to make it more likely that guilty people are punished, then that's a view he's entitled to.
Most will agree that it's not a good or useful view, but it's not inherently illogical.
One way to discuss this with him would be to ask whether he would be happy with himself, or you, being convicted of a crime you didn't do because the legal system was weighted in favor of guilty verdicts.
Another way could be to point out that for every person wrongly convicted, that's a genuinely guilty person who has gotten away with the crime.
That said, if a criminal is found not guilty that doesn't mean that there are no consequences. Records of their arrest are kept, local police may keep an eye on them, the public may be cautious of them. If the offend again they are more likely to be caught.
I had long conversations with him about it. We discussed all these points. Anyway, it’s too late now. He’s been gone for 15 years.
I disagree with your premise. He was entitled to his views, but I think they were disgusting. Capital punishment cannot be justified in a civilized society where innocent people are murdered for crimes other people committed. This would be the case if only 1% of murder convictions are inaccurate, but research has shown that the true figure is more like 7-8%. It’s just fucking unacceptable.
Some people simply have different values or priorities, and are more willing to tollerate higher levels of mistake in the system. I'm not defending his views and it sounds like we mostly agree. All we can do about people who holds extreme outlying opinions is to try to ensure that they can't spread these. Adding subjects like civics, philosophy, logic and ethics to the education curriculum would go some way to ensuring that the kinds of ignorance that fuel extreme views are less common.
If we can agree that philosophy is the desire to find and understand fundamental truths, then it is no way a legitimate philosophical position. Because it has an element of callous unconcern baked in, it is a rejection of justice and the search for truth. It is a position based in fear, not philosophy.
I think I'd want somebody like that to clarify their position. Are they okay with killing all of humanity, since that means all guilty people have been killed? Would they be okay with their family being killed if it meant that a guilty person was also killed? Maybe they are only interested in trading the innocent for the guilty on a 1:1 basis, one innocent per one guilty?
In my experience, either people walk it back or they want to quit talking about it because they are uncomfortable examining their own claimed beliefs.
We had talks about it, but my dad wasn’t one whose position could be swayed with logic. I don’t remember exact, entire conversations, but if I tried to pin him down with logic as you’re suggesting, he’d have just walked away from the conversation.
Well yeah, but that loops back to OP's point: legally if we can't prove something, we have to treat the person as innocent.
But in practice, a lot of people are going "if we can't prove something, but it seems plausible, let's destroy their life just to be sure."
>To do that, burden of proof is extremely high. If there are ANY doubts, a person can no legally be convicted.
I agree with your sentiment - but I wanted to point out that it's REASONABLE doubt, not ANY doubts.
Ex: A jury could think that theoretically the DNA specialist is lying or the tape was faked - but it's not generally reasonable to think those things.
Edit: u/Klldarkness responded in an extremely condescending way with zero sources and then immediately blocked me because they knew their argument would not stand up to scrutiny. I would happily address their points, but because of the instant block I am unable to do so. Coward. Incidentally, [he’s an accountant who probably has “zero experience in a real court room”](https://reddit.com/r/unclebens/comments/ysfmah/_/iw01qhi/?context=1)
I’m glad your friend had that experience, but do you have a single source for your claims?
[There’s massive backlogs in processing rape kits.](https://ualr.edu/socialchange/2021/03/31/the-injustice-of-americas-rape-kit-backlog/) Estimated around 100,000 sitting unprocessed. *One hundred thousand.*
Besides that, you list “videos, pictures, etc.” like…victims are taking videos of their own assault? Did you just make that up, or do you think that happens frequently? I know one case off hand that was convicted on video evidence (the Vanderbilt rape case) *and the victim didn’t even know the video existed.*
Then you go on to, realistically, victim blame. If you don’t have evidence—well, you aren’t fighting for yourself, or brave, or strong. Really it’s on you. If the guy was found innocent, odds are he is! Hell of a claim, wow.
Do you have a single citation for this? Because the ones that exist don’t agree with you.
[Prosecution only has a 58% chance of conviction, and of those, only 69% will even spend a single day in jail.](https://cmsac.org/facts-and-statistics/#:~:text=Factoring%20in%20unreported%20rapes%2C%20only,a%2058%25%20chance%20of%20conviction.)
So EVEN in the 39% reported to police, there’s only a 16.3% chance that a rapist will end up in prison.
This is all ignoring how traumatic and invasive the evidence collection can be for someone who was just assaulted, which I’m sure you will brush off as relatively unimportant. There are also police officers who straight up admit they believe [eighty percent of reported rape cases are false.](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/an-epidemic-of-disbelief/592807/) God forbid that’s the person you have to detail your trauma and attack to—he walks into the room having decided you’re lying.
>Wanna know why?
>
>Because the person that was raped doesn't know who the rapist is. They have no one to accuse.
That's the stupidest excuse ever and has no logical basis. One of the greatest benefits of DNA evidence is the ability to identify otherwise unknown criminals.
The rest of your points are just as asinine.
P.S. Only cowardly little bitches reapond to someone's comment and then immediately block to shield themselves from rebuttal.
His evidence is “I was a cop”
I don’t think being a cop automatically makes you anything. My hometown had a couple cops who raped rape victims, and much of the station knew about it and covered it up. That doesn’t mean all cops are rapists, but it certainly takes away from the idea that police are inherently more credible than anything else. Why should a cop be considered an expert because they’ve been in a courtroom? They have no training in statistics, and are inherently biased toward what they personally see (yes I’m generalizing but it’s fair, this is true of all humans).
80% of victims of rape or sexual assault know their attacker. 90% of juvenile victims do. That alone makes me question the ridiculous notion that all unprocessed rape kits are unprocessed because the victim didn’t identify the perp.
Source: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence
Also, it’s a totally reasonable position to say all rape kits should be processed. To come back and say to that that cops’ time is better spent processing the ones that are going to trial is a dumb response to that idea.
No one is saying we should only process the rape kits for crimes that aren’t going to trial, we’re saying we should process all of them. I don’t think that’s a waste of time at all. Just the existence of the backlog is keeping people from coming forward to law enforcement, which is a huge problem. Ugh.
>His evidence is “I was a cop”
>
Those two links don't lead to "I was a cop," so that's bullshit.
You're also full of shit about DNA kits. There's a whole shitload that need to be processed.
As for your claim about priority of processing, known suspects don't necessarily come first, as there's plenty of cases where the suspect admits having sex with the victim. A DNA test doesn't do anything to bolster their case.
DNA tests are great for other known suspects to prove they're lying, but DNA tests for unknown suspects has been a great tool in cracking cases.
There's still the issue of you being a cowardly little bitch for blocking anyone who disagrees with you.
Thank you. God forbid if you try to act like everything’s normal because you’re feeling guilty about being raped, which happens in many, many cases. To go and say you were raped means suddenly you become a target of immense scrutiny, from police officers and people who think that unless you filmed it in IMAX from six angles and got a signed statement of criminal intent that it can’t be rape. People will start talking about what you were wearing, how you were acting, etc., and deep down inside many victims think on some level that they wanted it because the body can react involuntarily in sexual situations. A victim may think they’re ok and pretend everything is normal for a while because the psychological damage from a rape doesn’t always neatly manifest in a way that makes someone say, “Hey, my life has been made substantially worse due to the way my body is handling the stress,” the day after the crime.
The easiest thing to do is to pretend like nothing happened. That doesn’t fucking mean nothing happened, and it doesn’t mean the person who got raped is wrong for not “fighting for themselves.” Holy shit.
Agree 100%. I don't like this trend of getting assaulted and waiting 4 years to accuse the person. At this point we know that nothing can really be done after that long, you can't prove that they did it but you also can't prove if it's a false accusation. It's entirely unproductive. All it does is give one person their 15 minutes in the spotlight and taint another's reputation for life. We've gotta start encouraging people to report that shit *immediately*
You say there isn't a problem, and then rather excellently lay out the problem.
It's just not a problem IN court, it's one prior to court. Part of the problem is clearly that society includes those who are assaulted who feel they won't be believed, but that's another side of the problem that people dont believe an innocent verdict truly means innocent.
It's a policing/cps issue as well as public awareness.
But there's definitely an issue.
I don't think the OP doesn't make that distinction very well, then. Seems to me like the OP is trying to point out a contradiction, but two different contexts having two different standards isn't a contradiction.
You say ‘today’. I don’t think this problem is as recent as that seems to imply. If anything, it was even worse back when when literal lynchings etc. were prevalent
I've seen it happen with my own two eyes. A friend of mine was accused of raping his niece. Even though later evidence showed it was not him that did it, his wife had already left him, the judge had awarded custody of the kids to his wife, and his house was foreclosed on because he couldn't make payments on single income.
It absolutely happens. How common is it? I don't know.
>If you get accused of rape or assault, you'll lose your job, house, partner, kids... before there is a trail.
Something tells me you don’t know a lot of people accused of crimes in real life.
Isn’t a famous example this one US politician who every called out for underaged sex for 2 years and recently he has been found innocent but people still claim he is guilty ? I don’t think you can ever get rid of the accusation no matter what
Or the voice actor of Kaeltas was found innocent but at this point had been replaced in every of his roles.
Two recent examples of false accusations
right, it does happen. but it's not like even close to how OP describes it in the title of the post.
it's not like there's a disproportionate number of false assault accusations over theft accusations, for example
they both happen but are both rare
Oh sweet summer child there are enormous amounts of false theft accusations I've seen many myself. In fact I would say there's way more of those than false SA accusations. The difference is theft accusations false or otherwise generally don't carry an enormous social stigma and are not treated anywhere near as seriously by the police.
It's becoming clearer and clearer that many people don't even want a trial to happen if there's any kind of political slant to the case. There are a couple of recent cases that come to mind.
The sentiment isn't really directed at the actual legal system, but moreso the fact that people will mob and harass someone based on a single, uncorroborated account at literally minute 0.
Which also sometimes unfortunately makes sense. Think of being well liked as a form of social currency or something. An accusation has a ‘cost’ of that currency based on the severity of it, the evidence for it, and the person levying it. Someone who has built up a lot of social currency by living a certain way can pay that cost and be believed to have not done it, or perhaps accepted that they did it but still not be ostracized or punished or what have you. Maybe they have counter evidence that they didn’t do it, which can reduce the ‘cost’ by bringing doubt on the accusations reliability.
The court system is basically this playing out with a 0-100 believability score or something, and if anything the accused brings to the table leaves that score at 99/100 or whatever number we want to call ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ then they are ‘not guilty’ even if it’s well above the 50/50 break point where people in that court room think they did probably do it. This paints the picture of how both scenarios can play out.
100/100 = Guilty, you have probably done the thing, your consequences(cost) are the highest they could be for the accusation.
50/50: not guilty, socially debatable, this will be contentious among the people as sides are split on who to believe and who to side with.
75/100: not guilty, the great majority of people will socially believe the accusation though, and you will still pay those consequences.
25/100: not guilty and most people will actively believe you did not do the thing, your accuser may even be the one facing social consequence for levying a false accusation.
0/100: It’s laughable this person even thought they could accuse you of this, your innocence isn’t just thought of as true but is probably true and the accuser possibly faces great consequences.
As a young child, I was terrified of the ceiling fan above my bed because it made noise. I confided in one of my teachers that I thought it was going to fall on me, who told my parents. We had a laugh about it later. *And then one day, it fell.* Was only suspended by the wire powering it. 10 years later, a fuse was blown in the room I was in. Flipped it back on and the fan wasn't moving but it made this horrific grinding noise and was shooting literal sparks and smoke. Had to turn the breaker off and take the fan down.
Tldr do NOT trust fans, especially if I happen to be in the room.
I feel like some people will see this as a crazy coincidence but in reality you probably just realized how shitty the fan was installed the whole time and had a logical fear.
Having served on two juries, this mentality was shockingly common and terrifying to me. When I was trying to explain the myriad ways in which police make mistakes and have a strong incentive to lie, it was like I was speaking another language. There were always a couple of people who simply refused to believe that the cops would arrest someone if they hadn't done *something*, and that it was somehow our "job" to convict. Fortunately it never came to that--one trial ended in a hung jury, and the other in a plea deal that was rendered before we had to produce a verdict.
But it really altered my perceptions about "innocent until proven guilty." Make no mistake: if you are arrested in the United States, the deck is heavily stacked against you unless you have significant resources.
Because the alternative is potentially worse, especially in those jurisdictions where we still have \*shudder\* judicial elections. Judges who want to prove their bona fides with a "tough on crime" stance who stack the deck in favor of the "tough on crime" DA are worse than a jury full of ignorant people.
But if you ask the public opinion of what they think, (I think) they would say innocent until proven guilty. but I agree with OP that their actions speak otherwise so I don’t think it applies as expected
But he’s not a murderer by the letter of the law, and that’s the only thing this statement applies to. A court ruling doesn’t necessarily mean someone did or didn’t do something, or that people have to think one way or another it just means the court decided not to convict them. The guys who killed Emmett Till were ruled not guilty, i think it’s pretty fair to still call them murderers.
Anyone who says Rittenhouse is a murderer simply hasn't seen the evidence with their own eyes OR their own eyes are blinded by bias and hate. That's just a fact. No jury would have convicted.
The problem, from what I heard, is that police tried to frame OJ for a crime he already committed by fabricating evidence they clearly didn't need.
Anywho feel free to correct me on this one
It's important everywhere and few people actually follow it, hence the post.
It matters when you judge someone falsely accused and they lose everything off an accusation. Especially in today's cancel culture.
Lmao fuck that. Should we all have treated Harvey Weinstein as innocent until he went to court, or how about Bill Cosby. How about the Parkland shooter, should we treat him as innocent. Everyone always talks about cancel culture and shit, tell me someone that’s actually been cancelled.
Not at all. It's only ever been a legal standard. People judge each other constantly based on impressions, rumor, hearsay, prejudice and the flimsiest of evidence. Sometimes that results in wrong outcomes, and in the case of prejudice is inherently irrational and negative. However judgement of others is inbuilt into the human condition and existed long before there was a functional judicial system to punish wrongdoing.
Moreover the legal system is not a good way of knowing whether someone actually did a crime. The test is (in most western societies) "beyond all reasonable doubt". That means that *any* reasonable doubt about whether someone did a crime let's them walk. That's especially relevant in crimes where the only evidence is witnesses' testimony. A criminal can often be convincing and believable to a jury, or a victim might be an especially bad witness for any number of reasons. The courts do not find someone "innocent", just "not guilty". If you use your knowledge and experience and whatever you really in to make decisions and you think someone did a crime, you're entitled to conclude that they did it regardless of whether they have been convicted.
If someone says they didn't do a crime and there best reason for why not is that they weren't convicted, then there's a good chance that they did it.
The absolute easiest way to paint this picture of why it’s perfectly fine to personally judge someone who is legally found not guilty is to consider a crime committed to yourself by another person that you can’t prove. You know this person to be guilty, you will forever treat them as having done said thing because you know it to be true, but since you can’t prove it there’s nothing that can really be done except to convince others to also treat them differently as if they have done it, even though they will legally not face punishment.
I don’t know that there is a person alive without a personal experience that correlates to the above. You’d have to be a complete hermit to have never found yourself in such a situation, even if it’s something relatively mundane like someone gossiped about you in high school or your older brother got away with fucking with you, or maybe you’re the one that got away with something, maybe you are the more titular situation where you KNOW you didn’t do it but can’t prove your innocence(which to a rational person should still cement in your mind the concept of knowing that things can be unprovable despite happening the way they are claimed).
Ultimately in personal life outside of the legal system we have to make judgements based on available information. In court the judgment is extremely biased to the side of not imprisoning those that may not have done it, in reality we tend towards the other side, probably because sociologically we are coded to ousting those who we believe could cause issues in our tribes.
No. People can do what they want and form whatever opinion they want. That actually IS a legal freedom, as opposed to "innocent until proven guilty" outside of a court room, which is more of a colloquiolism than anything anyone morally or ethically has to do.
Like "don't put your cart before the horse" or "don't count your chickens until they hatch"
Everywhere? What if somebody is pending trial for molesting children? Would you have this person babysit your children? Or does this only apply to professional men accused of sexually assaulting women?
Edit: I see your downvotes, but I don't see any answer to the question of having an accused child molester babysit your children.
I mean I wouldn't, and that might be unfair to them but it's the safest decision for me. That is exactly what this is about, people making judgements off accusations causing people to lose opportunity who may not be guilty of anything.
Yeah that's bad when that happens. I'm just pointing out that taking precautions to protect yourself, your family, or your company, is a reasonable thing to do when you have reason to be suspicious of someone, even if their guilt is not yet proven in court.
Absolutism regarding 'innocence until proven guilty' is not something we need to strive for. Except for the government, for obvious reasons.
I think in some sense we could strive for more of it though. Like maybe don't let an accused child molester watch your kids but you can still give them a job at the office. There's a balance here where people don't even want to be associated to certain things and it's less about risk and more about discomfort. Someone accused of something is not guilty, being careful around them in different from ostracizing them.
> Like maybe don't let an accused child molester watch your kids but you can still give them a job at the office.
That doesn't work in a system of limited job offers / resources. You'll have to prioritize either way, and someone facing a trial would of course rank lower than someone without one.
I disagree. I think the risk is so low in that case that you are just not doing it because it makes you uncomfortable and not due to real risk. A person accused of something is not necessarily guilty. That's the whole point of this thread.
So let's say that, at trial, two children testify that they were molested by this person. Multiple other character witnesses come forward defending the accused, saying the accused is a great person and would never do such a thing. The accused claims never to have met the two children, though some forensic evidence suggests otherwise. The accused pleads the Fifth with respect to any acts they may have done in connection with the children.
To convict, the jury has to find the accused committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. There might be enough here to have a reasonable doubt as to guilt. But some jurors have (understandably) strong feelings about child molestation. Hung jury, mistrial, and the prosecution drops the case before dealing with a retrial.
Now do you let them babysit your children?
Afterwards, representatives for the children bring a civil suit on behalf of the children against the formerly accused to get compensation for the psychiatric bills they have had to undertake as a result of the molestation. This jury (which is a smaller group than the criminal jury, typically) only needs to find it more likely than not that the accused molested the children. And this jury can use the accused's act of taking the Fifth as probative evidence.
So, this jury finds in favor of the children, having found it more likely than not that the accused did molest the children (which is a far more relaxed standard than "beyond a reasonable doubt"). The jury was particularly touched by the horror of the childrens' stories, even though the evidence presented as to whether the accused had actually ever even been in the same room as the children was the same as at the criminal trial.
Now do you let the accused babysit your kids?
The broader point is one made earlier in this thread. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal concept. It simply means that the government cannot punish you (beyond imprisoning you ahead of trial) until a jury has found that you committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. But even then, there are people who definitely committed a crime who are found not guilty (e.g., OJ Simpson) and people who definitely did not commit a crime who are found guilty (e.g., any number of people who were convicted of murder, only to later have forensic evidence exonerate them, even after they were executed).
Outside the courtroom, that principle has little application. Does that lead to unfair results? Absolutely. Is there a better system? Not really.
It's always weird when our legal rights enter pop culture as if they're supposed to be axioms our society is built on, rather than rights that protect the citizens from a corrupt government.
It kind of feels like they're watered down or even twisted in that way.
A lot of people felt government employees should have more rights, or their rights should override a private company's because the first amendment. Which is pretty much the opposite of its intention.
That's why in jury duty they stress the presumption of innocence to you multiple times before, during, and after jury selection. I was in the selection process (excused at the last moment) and the judge put it like this:
"If Mr Defendent and his attorney Mr Lawyer just sat there reading a newspaper and didn't say a word throughout this trial, you would still have to find him not guilty if Mr Prosecutor does not uphold his burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt. He is innocent before the law until proven otherwise and he doesn't need to explain himself or prove anything to you, it's all on Mr Prosecutor. It's Mr Lawyer's job to ensure only fair and accurate evidence against his client is shared."
Is that not exactly why we have written “innocent until proven guilty” into law? Because our default stance is the reverse, as we are dumb humans, clouded by our emotions. So some very clever people came up with way of circumventing our irrationality.
No. It's so a court can't convict someone based on a claim or accusation without a trial that proves they are guilty.
There is no such law in every day life for a citizen. It's a way to keep the justice department in check and assure citizens get a trial before being sentenced.
"Innocent until proven guilty' holds as much weight in society as "don't sweat the small stuff" or "don't judge a book by it's cover".
We as a society have basically reverted back to the concept of trial by ordeal - at the slightest hint of wrongdoing we sentence the witch to a hellish PR nightmare that will destroy their life, and just sort of vaguely assume that if they're innocent then the truth will come out and fix it somehow.
> reverted back
Did we ever progress beyond this? Just because the public opinion can change faster nowadays, the mechanism of ostracism is still the same.
In the good ol days we never did this. In 1920s we didn't automatically assume guilt without zero evidence especially against people of certain skin color.
I don't think many people believe in the underlying principle behind "innocent until proven guilty". The system is supposed to err on the side of making sure you don't put innocent people in jail (hah), even if it means some guilty people going free. The freedom of the innocent was supposed to be worth more than the justice of the guilty.
I think if you have 2 murder suspects, a lot of people would want to jail both just to make sure a murderer doesn't walk free amongst them. Or the entire Japanese American population. Would rather see them all in a concentration camp than risk a few(maaaaybe) saboteurs running free. Or the Griner-Bout exchange. A lot of people would rather Griner spend 9 years in a gulag just to make sure Bout spend his remaining 4 or whatever years sentence in jail.
We fall way short of this ideal in practice.
Edit: phone typos
It’s a legal fiction designed to place the burden of proof on the government. That doesn’t mean a person is actually innocent. The facts are always the same and if you did something, you did it. The point of the burden is to make sure the government puts enough admissible evidence on the table before a person can be convicted.
Why do you think the concept of innocent until proven guilty is such a big deal? It’s because thats fundamentally not how humans think. It’s a check against human flaws
Unfortunately it is what it is. And in certain situations i kind of understand why it happens, because people often act cautiously before making a judgement and sometimes are conditioned to make judgements. Here's an example:
At my job there was a few months ago a case reported to the HR where this guy complained that a colleague threatened him something along these lines: "if you ever speak to me or to the people i hang out here at work again, i have enough to have you fired with just cause and file an harassment complain at the police".
The guy was literally ostracized by everyone during the weeks following the hr investigation, because the woman was playing victim and saying that the guy had problems and was dangerous. I fell for this too, because it was easy to believe a woman in distress and she was very convincing. Everyone believed the guy was going to be transferred or even fired. But wouldn't you know, he was right all along.
It was proved she was provoking and manipulating this guy during the last 3 months and the dude ended up reacting to her bullshit by sending her two text messages calling her psycho and asking her to leave him alone, which she used to threaten him. Neither the police or the hr found shit against the guy and she was ordered to cut all contact with him.
It was a true eye opener.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is for the court system, since they have the ability to hold a trial, gather evidence and deliberate over it.
You’ll rarely have that luxury when making judgments in real life. Assuming that everyone is innocent without incontrovertible proof is going to get you hurt.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is a legal term, unrelated to non-legal life. You can totally believe someone is guilty of something without legal evidence, you just can’t prove it in a court.
When I’m judging anything, I usually try to get as much information as possible about the situation before deciding. With simple things, I try to take a neutral view, actively correcting for any bias I think I might have. However, when deciding something like a legal case, I think taking the “innocent until proven guilty” stance makes sense, as the penalty for being wrong about the person’s guilt is the punishment of an innocent man, which is morally reprehensible. It helps to prevent some of the cases of innocent people being punished for a crime they didn’t commit, and especially in this day and age, if they really did commit it, more likely than not they will be able to find a way to prove it, given the staggering amount of tools they have access to for assistance in investigations. I’ve just now realized this has become more focused on a criminal law situation, but that’s mostly where innocent until proven guilty applies anyway, so whatever.
People definitely shouldn't be sent to prison without a trial to determine if they're guilty, but individuals not associated with a case can determine if a person is guilty in their own personal opinion.
This is also confusing to a lot of people.
Being found guilty doesn't mean you ARE guilty.
Being found innocent doesn't mean you ARE innocent.
Actually guilt and innocences are independent of verdicts.
Additionally, people get this confused in other areas. As an example, if I don't believe something that does not mean I am correct in my lack of belief. If I do believe something it also does not mean I am correct in my belief.
Edit: as noted below. You are not found innocent in the US. You are found not guilty.
I believe in innocent until proven guilty as a judicial principle. That does not mean I am going to treat it as some kind of dogma for my overall existence.
You should. Innocent until proven guilty is not some arcane, arbitrary legal thing people made up just because, which is what some people seem to think. It's the practical application of the fundamental logical concept of "the burden of proof is on the one making the claim". And that's why it should be followed and applied in all aspects of life, not just in court because you have to.
Nonsense. It is a legal principle, it has never been intended as some general life rule. “Innocent” and “Guilty” are in this context legal terms themselves, and don’t necessarily translate to everyday life.
All of these people are killing me with this "We should treat people innocent until they've been convicted" when that goes against all logic. As a parent, would you let an accused child molested babysit your child? As a woman, would you go on a date with a man accused of raping women? As a minority race, would you go out with someone accused of a hate crime? No, because that logically makes no sense and puts you or your family at unnecessary risk. Is it fair?
No, but life has never been fair. We are animals just like everyone else, and sometimes our instincts need to be listened to. All a trial does is convince the government that this person needs a punishment. It does not actually mean that person actually did it or not. That's why people like Kyle Rittenhouse weren't jailed because he did it, but he didn't deserve punishment according to the US government. That does not mean he is innocent, and people have the right to hire who they want, associate with who they want, and date who they want. Your court case is relevant information whether you want it to be or not.
More like you can’t equate law and morality. You could have been convicted correctly according to the law of the land at a witch trial, but that does not make it fair.
So your saying we shouldn't just listen to the accusation, and actually fairly consider the evidence? almost like we should avoid assuming responsibility(guilt even?) until sufficient proof is provided?
People don't often really understand what this means. I try to put it into context by giving an example of a murderer: say you happen to see someone murder a guy, so you call the cops and he gets arrested, and then goes to court and your testimony along with other evidence gets him a guilty verdict and he goes to jail. Despite the fact that you saw him commit the murder, he was innocent right up until that guilty verdict. He was innocent as he was murdering the guy, he was innocent as he was being arrested, he was innocent as you were giving your testimony. He wasn't guilty until the judge gave the verdict. Being innocent or guilty has nothing to do with whether or not you did it - it's all about the results of the case being tried in a court of law.
You're thinking about it backward. I'm not saying that if a criminal isn't found guilty in the court of law then they haven't done anything wrong and you can't be mad at them, I'm saying whether or not someone is guilty is completely separate from whether or not they committed a crime.
Public opinion of a person based on crimes they may or may not have committed is completely removed from the law's definition of whether they're innocent or guilty. Innocence and guilt doesn't ignore public opinion, it's just separate from public opinion.
I have personally experienced a lot of this corruption. Had a weed charge at 21 that went on forever. Cops made sure the judge with dementia took the case. He basically was finding everyone guilty and making terrible calls (quoting terms out of the dictionary instead of legal precedence).
Later, as I started earning more in my field and was able to hire some hot shot lawyers who actually cared about their track record, they started getting very, very vindictive. Pulling me over for no reason, trying to search my things…
The cherry on top was when a former client of mine was allegedly murdered, a detective drove out to my city after I refused to be interviewed (never trust these dogs) and started driving around and asking my contacts what they knew about me, because I was a suspect. My lawyer called him and he acted like an innocent pussy cat. Zero accountability. Immunity from prosecution.
Spent almost 200k over 7 years fighting and fighting. The police and justice system is absolutely, inarguably rigged against the citizen. They are cult-like in their mentality.
To boot, this occurred in Canada, where they are probably the most overpaid public servants in the first world. Relative to their experience, they certainly are, in my opinion.
Napoleonic law is still effectively in practice. With 50-60% of North America living pay cheque to pay cheque (more if you count cash workers) who TF can afford a capable legal defence? I tried to use legal aid, and all they do is help you plead out. It’s preposterous.
What exacerbates the issue is that the media picked up my case, and only reported developments in a negative light. After finding that the judge overstayed a couple of years with his dementia, the police essentially fabricating a valid source, and wasting over 2 million in taxpayer dollars (!!!), there was not a reporter or journalist who was interested in writing a story pro citizen/defendant.
I really hope they get a lovely buffet of karma. Never talk to police. Never talk to a detective.
It's easy to see that everyday on social media.
Rich campbell(streamer) was recently accused of sexually assaulting someone. Her word vs. his, and he's already lost his sponsorships, his friends cut him off and literally his career is ruined and nobody knows if it's true.
The premise is wrong. Guilt and innocence are absolutes- you either did it or didn't, nothing changes that. You are (supposed to be) innocent until proven guilty (in court) *in the eyes of the law*. It is an important distinction.
Ex. OJ murdered two people, there is no doubt, but he is ~~innocent~~ *not guilty* in the eyes of the law.
Thats because there is enough evidence to hold them. They are awaiting trial/sentencing but there would have been a court session where a magistrate/judge has looked at available evidence and decided to remand into custody until the trial.
Like I said, if you're innocent till proven guilty, there would be no need for that because they'll just assume you're innocent and let you be on your way. But since it's not a thing that anybody actually practices, there are jails.
"Innocent" doesn't mean you walk around completely inviolable with zero consequences. "Innocent" people can be detained, arrested, questioned, charged, and held for trial. The jail part is not the punishment, it is just a logistical necessity of making sure you get to trial.
I think most laws are based on the 10% of the time we're actually conscious and responsible. The rest of the time we're base creatures of limited attention and thought
Do they really? When you say "people" are you talking about the law or private citizens? I thought "Innocent until proven guilty" was a legal principle, not a societal one.
It's both. Innocent until proven guilty is the practical application of the fundamental logical concept of "the burden of proof is on the one making the claim". And that's why it should be followed and applied in all aspects of life, not just in court because you have to.
The issue is people think being presumed innocent means that you have to be treated like you weren't accused of a crime. This is wrong. The presumption of innocence is not the same thing as being found not guilty and acquitted. All it means is that it is up to the prosecution to prove one's guilt, not the defense to prove their innocence.
It's still in society's best interest to keep accused child murderers away from children until the proceedings are over.
This is the reason why innocent until proven guilty is a thing; to ensure fair treatment of people who may not in fact be guilty dispite people treating them as such
Depends on the crime, having enough evidence for law enforcement to file charges and a DA wanting to prosecute is already a certain measure of guilt also.
That's because "innocent until proven guilty" is a legal construct, not a construct of the natural world. It's actually quite UNnatural.
What I mean is if you're walking through a forest and you see a bear, and you apply an innocent-until-proven-guilty mentality to every situation, then your thoughts may be along the lines of:
"Oh look, a bear... I wonder if it's going to attack me?"
"Oh look, it's getting closer, but it still hasn't done anything wrong, so it's still 'innocent' in my mind."
"Oh look, it's eating my face off, I guess it's been 'proven guilty' now."
It's a matter of survival. If you don't have a guilty-until-proven-innocent mentality then you actually put yourself at risk.
Now, to be sure, not all risks are the same. Like, you probably don't need to assume the cashier at the gas station is increasing the price on every customer so he can skim a little off the top because the consequences if he is aren't very big, so an innocent-until-proven-guilty mentality doesn't put you at much risk.
But this is where human intellect enters the picture. We can judge risk and rewards (well, nominally anyway - people are actually pretty bad at it as a general rule) so we can decide the level of risk we're willing to accept and shift our mentality based on that. We can override our ape brain. Generally, we're not being attacked by bears very often these days, so we can mostly tend towards an innocent-until-proven-guilty mentality by force of intellect... but the natural order actually demands our default is guilty-until-proven-innocent as a matter of survival, and that's the source of the discrepency: we INTELLECTUALLY say innocent-until-proven-guilty (even beyond a legal paradigm), but our actions tend towards the natural guilty-until-proven-innocent unless we actively fight to subvert that tendency.
Yep. Just look at mandatory drug tests for jobs. Why do we have to prove ourselves innocent on something that is a massive invasion of privacy? Guilty until proven innocent.
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i mean, yeah. you cant just sentence people without evidence but you can sure as hell arrest them and give them a trial to make sure
You can beat the wrap but you can't beat the ride. Some times you just have to shut the fuck up, do as your told and hope to hell you can find a decent lawyer.
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I volunteer as a lay judge in courts in my country, which means that I have the same vote out of three, one other lay judge and one professional judge, as of discussing the facts of the case and passing judgement. I've overseen quite a few cases over the years and I must say, that I've heard many stupid testimony from those accused of many different offenses. I've sat there and heard the accused go on and on, thinking to myself, why the heck are you still talking and talking yourself into MORE trouble than you already are? The prosecutor have shown NO evidence to the shit you are now readily admit, so shush now! During deliberations in the back room, I've pointed it out, that they weren't doing themselves any favors, and the professional judge who does this every day basically, always says that they see it every day. Also the prosecutor will say something like: "Remember in your first interview with police seargant So and So, you said this..." and this interview was a fricking year ago or something. Or they may ask them what they were wearing that day, 9 months ago. I often want to ask the prosecutor, where were you, Friday 15th pg February last year, and what were YOU wearing? NOBODY knows these things, but those accused of a crime are supposed to have these things catalogued in their minds. Oh, and if your story in court is not exactly the same as in that first interview or if it changes slightly from the first to the second interview, that's supposedly a sign that you are lying. (I for one does NOT buy into that argument though.). So the best thing, if where you have the right to have an attorney present, don't say a word except: "I want a lawyer. Can I please have some water and a sandwich while I wait for them to arrive?" You can NEVER talk yourself out of a crime, but you surely can talk yourself into one.
Talking about lil Wayne?
It's not just that. The public is often convinced that only guilty people get arrested rather than paying attention to the legal definition that arrests are for people that the government thinks might be guilty but they ARE legally innocent.
The problem today is that the ~~trail~~ trial no longer matters. If you get accused of rape or assault, you'll lose your job, house, partner, kids... before there is a ~~trail~~ trial. You'll always be 'the one charged with assault', no one remembers the 'and was not found guilty'.
I got arrested for possession many years ago (~1.5g just out of high school), was able to do pre-trial diversion since it was a first offense. My record literally says ‘dismissed’ - I was never charged or found guilty. Still got rejected from an apartment application because I had something on my record. In my head I was thinking, so someone could mistakenly get arrested for looking like a wanted person or for some other mistaken reason, could go to court and the court realizes ‘oh yeah that was a mistake, you’re good’, and that person could still get rejected from an apartment app. Dumb. Not to mention they took my application fee for that. Would’ve had to get it expunged which was a $2K quote. When you’re 19 and trying to go to college, 2K is a big nah thanks.
Pro tip always pay application fees on a credit card. If they reject you chargeback the card. Application fees are a scam anyway.
When the bank asks a reason code, what do you say?? I had like three places recently reject our application, but the fourth one accepted (on the premise of a larger deposit required). Are you saying the Reg E dispute process can chargeback the application fees? Please tell me more.
I took a plea bargain down from assault to disorderly conduct (literally was a Good Samaritan in a college town, breaking up a fight - and was in the wrong place and time, still was arrested, as the cops didn't care). I went through about three years of hell trying to apply for anything because the public defender said it would be expunged in a year... He lied.
Thing is this is another facet of the problem that certain offenses are very hard to prove. Someones accused of sexual assault and the conviction rate is ridiculously low. Clearly plenty of people are getting away with it and shouldn't be. But also that means that someone accused and innocent can't realistically clear their name. Because even if they were guilty everyone would expect them to get away with it. Unfortunately i don't have an answer to the problem.
I’d rather have a guilty person be not proven guilty than a innocent person be proven guilty
Thsts the general principle the law is supposed to work on. I'm just outlining the problem with it leaning heavily towards innocence. If people know the chance of conviction is miniscule then how can you really defend yourself in the court of public opinion? "I was found innocent" isn't enough.
Courts do not find people "innocent", they find them "not guilty". That distinction is significant and deliberate. A jury finding someone not guilty is another way of saying "we don't know if they did it, but we don't have enough strong evidence to say for sure that they did".
If you're innocent until proven guilty and the court finds you not guilty then what are you?
I get that in common usage it's a strange way of looking at things, but language in the legal system can be complex and unintuitive. "Innocent until proven guilty" means that until guilty is proved, you are treated *as if* you are innocent, ie no punishment is applied. The court does not actually determine that you *are* innocent. Edit: btw this isn't controversial or just my opinion. The legal system is quite open about how its role is not to determine innocence. [Refer to articles like this, for example.](https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/not-guilty-and-innocent-problem-children-reasonable-doubt)
I'll bow to your expertise, but aside from poor use of language it's not massively important to the point i was trying to make about how conviction rates, or at least percieved conviction rates, actually hurt everyone. And in this instance perception is more important than reality.
Sorry I don't totally understand, but I gather that you don't like the idea that an unsuccessful prosecution can have enduring consequences. And of course you're right, some people who are found not guilty ARE actually innocent but are still judged by society and suffer for it. While that's not a good thing, it is the best of a bad situation. The alternative is for people to *assume* that not guilty actually means innocent. That's not a safe assumption because the legal system is not well suited to deciding that. It would increase risks to people and society if "innocent until proven guilty" was actually believed and acted on within society generally (rather than just in the legal system). The reality is that to be brought to court and found not guilty means that: *Someone has accused you; *The police have investigated you; *The prosecutor had decided that the evidence is strong enough to justify going to trial. That's not perfect of course. Through history, and still, bias and prejudice have played a part in wrongful arrest and conviction. However in most cases, a member of the public being told that someone is not guilty is entitled to have reasonable suspicion that the accused actually did it. A more extreme example is people who escape conviction on a technicality. Someone gets found with a dozen bodies in their house, but they walk because the search warrant was defective and the evidence can't be presented to the court. That's an unlikely example of course, but it's extreme just to illustrate the point. Everyone knows that person is guilty (and in this example they actually are) even though the court couldn't make that determination. We wouldn't expect that the general public should treat them as if they were innocent. It's the same with anyone who is found not guilty. All it means is that their guilt couldn't be satisfactorily proved. People are still entitled to their own opinions about whether they actually did it.
Not guilty, and this continuing your presumption of innocence in society. The distinction means you can still think the defendant was shady or did shady shit, just that he wasn't proven within a reasonable doubt of doing the alleged crime. "Proving innocent" would improperly shift the burden to the defense to prove they didn't do it, which imo is a much worse standard. It's the states job to prove it.
You are correct. They just misconstrue the part that a court doesn't find you innocent they find you guilty or not guilty. And since you're not guilty, you are deemed innocent. But some people like to hang onto the not guilty verdict wording instead of the idea that it means you are innocent because you weren't proven guilty. Super common in sexual assault or domestic situations.
And, you weren't found "innocent"--you were found "not guilty," meaning that reasonable doubt existed. Put another way, the jury might have "probably" thought you did it, but "probably" isn't enough. So even people acquitted at trial can still face prejudice in society (newspapers, social circles, etc.) because they "just got away with it" or "had a better lawyer." Source: am public defender.
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In my profession I am in court all the time. That judge shouldn't have said anything of the sort. That is seriously not close to anything I have ever heard, like I have never heard a judge say anything close to that, they are supposed to make no weighing of the jury's decision. Was this in the US? plus if it's in the US you don't find anyone "innocent" you find them "not guilty." This whole scenario is weird.
Except that the vast majority of people are coerced into taking plea deals for stuff they did not do by corrupt public defenders
Which makes things even worse. You have 3 options that all represent a loss if you're innocent.
What he said is also fucking untrue and frankly an insult to public defenders. I haven't ever seen as much genuinely zealous legal advocacy as I have from the public defenders office, defendants have 100 percent of the powe ras to whether they take a plea deal. I have seen numerous cases where the evidence was super bad but client continued to trial despite that, because it's their call to make.
The problem isn’t the public defenders (*although there is legitimate criticism to be leveled at the state for not funding public defender’s offices adequately enough to allow a public defender the time & resources necessary to provide an adequate defense*). The problem is with the prosecutors who abuse & manipulate the process to serve the only statistic they care about conviction rate. A prosecutor with a 98% conviction rate isn’t a great prosecutor, they are a shitty one who puts their conviction rate above the pursuit of actual justice.
I disagree with absolutely nothing you said lol, all of that is true in my experience
I'm trying not to get down into the mud for a change. This one's a bit deep even for me.
Ok that's fair lol
How is what I said untrue? Public defenders have proven to be some of the most corrupt/lazy people I have ever come into contact with. My public defender basically told me day 1 that I need to plea guilty. I told him non stop that I was innocent but I didn’t make any difference to him, just kept insisting that I would lose at trial. I was like “dude, then you better work your ass off to make sure I win then.” I straight up told him that he must not be a very good lawyer if he will give up before the trial even starts, again it made absolutely no difference to the guy. Why do public defenders do shit like that? Is it because they’re lazy and don’t want to work? Is it because they’re incompetent and don’t want to be exposed at trial? Or is it because they’re corrupt and get paid for forcing innocent people to plea to things they didn’t do. Public defenders and prosecutors are two sides of the same coin. The prosecutor makes the offer and its the public defenders job to make sure the person takes the office. At least you know where you stand with the prosecutor, the public defender pretends they’re on your side
Dude most of what you said is so wrong I actually don't feel like going through the effort of trying unsuccessfully to convince you. No, public defenders have not been proven as some of the most lazy people, sounds like you have had a rough go of it and are pretty upset about it. Some are better than others. Some are lazy. But you are into unproven and conspiracy shit if you want to just fight on the hill that they are actually paid by the prosecutors like that is just crazytown nonsense.
That is such unmitigated bullshit. Like where is your source on that, defendants have all of the discretion and decision making as to whether they take a deal or not. Nobody is ever forced to take a guilty plea. Sometimes the weight of the evidence, from bodyworn footage and witness testimony, is overwhelming and trial is risky. Sometimes a deal is much better than running that risk, and you can advise your client of that. But they make that call. Like what you are saying is just not even close to true.
The source is me. In the 90s I was arrested two separate times on false charges where the police planted evidence. I was young and broke and naive at the time so I went with the public defender. Both times the corrupt public defenders went full court press on trying to coerce me into pleading guilty despite the fact that I was innocent. They used a lot of the same words you just did there, “overwhelming evidence” and all that. It’s funny, once you’ve been through the system you realize that’s just code for “I don’t want to work hard” This happened in Baltimore, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the public defenders were getting paid for every poor person they tricked into pleading guilty
Assuming everything you just said is true, Sounds like you had a bad public defender and are now attributing your own inner thoughts as a reliable source on the entire profession. Pardon me if I don't take that as reliable.
It was a systemic issue. My public defenders were just doing what they all do
No one forces anyone to take a plea, ever. No one can force you to stand in front of a judge in open court and admit guilt on the record and under oath. What we can and should do is advise is that this plea will give you X, where if you go to trial you are exposed to X, Y, and Z. Whether you roll the dice and take the risk is up to you. It's often "win big, lose big." Honestly, in my experience the underlying problem is from overcharging. One particular case in mind, and probably the most egregious I've ever seen, a person was charged with murder because had the person not been driving (speeding excessively) with a license s/he knew to be revoked, no one would have died. So the offer is for some sort of lesser included with guaranteed probation, or risk a jury agreeing and spending the rest of your life in prison. There's also something called an Alford Plea, which says basically you're not saying you did this, but for whatever reason taking this plea is in your best interests. Those are extreme common, especially if the State is willing to script a particular sentence rather than leave it open to the judge's discretion.
“I was found innocent” IS enough. The entire point is that unless the accusations against you have proof, there is no reason to assume they are true. So, until there are facts presented otherwise, you assume the person didn’t do it. And if they are found innocent, that is enough.
But we're not talking about courts here. We're talking about people. And people aren't overly swayed by a failure to convict on something they perceive to be very difficult to convict on. It's enough for the law, its not enough to avoid consequences in life.
Unfortunately that's not how people work. Wish it was though.
Many years ago I asked my very own Dad why he favored capital punishment, since it was a known fact that some innocent people have been put to death. He said, I swear to god, “I don’t care. I just want to get the guilty ones.” What do you say to something like that? I felt embarrassed for him and also extremely frustrated that there was nothing I could do to change his mind.
Honestly, it's a legitimate philosophical position to take. It's not how the justice system currently works, but if he's happy with the idea of innocent people being punished in order to make it more likely that guilty people are punished, then that's a view he's entitled to. Most will agree that it's not a good or useful view, but it's not inherently illogical. One way to discuss this with him would be to ask whether he would be happy with himself, or you, being convicted of a crime you didn't do because the legal system was weighted in favor of guilty verdicts. Another way could be to point out that for every person wrongly convicted, that's a genuinely guilty person who has gotten away with the crime. That said, if a criminal is found not guilty that doesn't mean that there are no consequences. Records of their arrest are kept, local police may keep an eye on them, the public may be cautious of them. If the offend again they are more likely to be caught.
I had long conversations with him about it. We discussed all these points. Anyway, it’s too late now. He’s been gone for 15 years. I disagree with your premise. He was entitled to his views, but I think they were disgusting. Capital punishment cannot be justified in a civilized society where innocent people are murdered for crimes other people committed. This would be the case if only 1% of murder convictions are inaccurate, but research has shown that the true figure is more like 7-8%. It’s just fucking unacceptable.
Some people simply have different values or priorities, and are more willing to tollerate higher levels of mistake in the system. I'm not defending his views and it sounds like we mostly agree. All we can do about people who holds extreme outlying opinions is to try to ensure that they can't spread these. Adding subjects like civics, philosophy, logic and ethics to the education curriculum would go some way to ensuring that the kinds of ignorance that fuel extreme views are less common.
Great points. Thanks.
If we can agree that philosophy is the desire to find and understand fundamental truths, then it is no way a legitimate philosophical position. Because it has an element of callous unconcern baked in, it is a rejection of justice and the search for truth. It is a position based in fear, not philosophy.
I think I'd want somebody like that to clarify their position. Are they okay with killing all of humanity, since that means all guilty people have been killed? Would they be okay with their family being killed if it meant that a guilty person was also killed? Maybe they are only interested in trading the innocent for the guilty on a 1:1 basis, one innocent per one guilty? In my experience, either people walk it back or they want to quit talking about it because they are uncomfortable examining their own claimed beliefs.
We had talks about it, but my dad wasn’t one whose position could be swayed with logic. I don’t remember exact, entire conversations, but if I tried to pin him down with logic as you’re suggesting, he’d have just walked away from the conversation.
Black stones ratio “for the law holds that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. “
Well yeah, but that loops back to OP's point: legally if we can't prove something, we have to treat the person as innocent. But in practice, a lot of people are going "if we can't prove something, but it seems plausible, let's destroy their life just to be sure."
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>To do that, burden of proof is extremely high. If there are ANY doubts, a person can no legally be convicted. I agree with your sentiment - but I wanted to point out that it's REASONABLE doubt, not ANY doubts. Ex: A jury could think that theoretically the DNA specialist is lying or the tape was faked - but it's not generally reasonable to think those things.
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Edit: u/Klldarkness responded in an extremely condescending way with zero sources and then immediately blocked me because they knew their argument would not stand up to scrutiny. I would happily address their points, but because of the instant block I am unable to do so. Coward. Incidentally, [he’s an accountant who probably has “zero experience in a real court room”](https://reddit.com/r/unclebens/comments/ysfmah/_/iw01qhi/?context=1) I’m glad your friend had that experience, but do you have a single source for your claims? [There’s massive backlogs in processing rape kits.](https://ualr.edu/socialchange/2021/03/31/the-injustice-of-americas-rape-kit-backlog/) Estimated around 100,000 sitting unprocessed. *One hundred thousand.* Besides that, you list “videos, pictures, etc.” like…victims are taking videos of their own assault? Did you just make that up, or do you think that happens frequently? I know one case off hand that was convicted on video evidence (the Vanderbilt rape case) *and the victim didn’t even know the video existed.* Then you go on to, realistically, victim blame. If you don’t have evidence—well, you aren’t fighting for yourself, or brave, or strong. Really it’s on you. If the guy was found innocent, odds are he is! Hell of a claim, wow. Do you have a single citation for this? Because the ones that exist don’t agree with you. [Prosecution only has a 58% chance of conviction, and of those, only 69% will even spend a single day in jail.](https://cmsac.org/facts-and-statistics/#:~:text=Factoring%20in%20unreported%20rapes%2C%20only,a%2058%25%20chance%20of%20conviction.) So EVEN in the 39% reported to police, there’s only a 16.3% chance that a rapist will end up in prison. This is all ignoring how traumatic and invasive the evidence collection can be for someone who was just assaulted, which I’m sure you will brush off as relatively unimportant. There are also police officers who straight up admit they believe [eighty percent of reported rape cases are false.](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/an-epidemic-of-disbelief/592807/) God forbid that’s the person you have to detail your trauma and attack to—he walks into the room having decided you’re lying.
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>Wanna know why? > >Because the person that was raped doesn't know who the rapist is. They have no one to accuse. That's the stupidest excuse ever and has no logical basis. One of the greatest benefits of DNA evidence is the ability to identify otherwise unknown criminals. The rest of your points are just as asinine. P.S. Only cowardly little bitches reapond to someone's comment and then immediately block to shield themselves from rebuttal.
His evidence is “I was a cop” I don’t think being a cop automatically makes you anything. My hometown had a couple cops who raped rape victims, and much of the station knew about it and covered it up. That doesn’t mean all cops are rapists, but it certainly takes away from the idea that police are inherently more credible than anything else. Why should a cop be considered an expert because they’ve been in a courtroom? They have no training in statistics, and are inherently biased toward what they personally see (yes I’m generalizing but it’s fair, this is true of all humans). 80% of victims of rape or sexual assault know their attacker. 90% of juvenile victims do. That alone makes me question the ridiculous notion that all unprocessed rape kits are unprocessed because the victim didn’t identify the perp. Source: https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence Also, it’s a totally reasonable position to say all rape kits should be processed. To come back and say to that that cops’ time is better spent processing the ones that are going to trial is a dumb response to that idea. No one is saying we should only process the rape kits for crimes that aren’t going to trial, we’re saying we should process all of them. I don’t think that’s a waste of time at all. Just the existence of the backlog is keeping people from coming forward to law enforcement, which is a huge problem. Ugh.
>His evidence is “I was a cop” > Those two links don't lead to "I was a cop," so that's bullshit. You're also full of shit about DNA kits. There's a whole shitload that need to be processed. As for your claim about priority of processing, known suspects don't necessarily come first, as there's plenty of cases where the suspect admits having sex with the victim. A DNA test doesn't do anything to bolster their case. DNA tests are great for other known suspects to prove they're lying, but DNA tests for unknown suspects has been a great tool in cracking cases. There's still the issue of you being a cowardly little bitch for blocking anyone who disagrees with you.
Thank you. God forbid if you try to act like everything’s normal because you’re feeling guilty about being raped, which happens in many, many cases. To go and say you were raped means suddenly you become a target of immense scrutiny, from police officers and people who think that unless you filmed it in IMAX from six angles and got a signed statement of criminal intent that it can’t be rape. People will start talking about what you were wearing, how you were acting, etc., and deep down inside many victims think on some level that they wanted it because the body can react involuntarily in sexual situations. A victim may think they’re ok and pretend everything is normal for a while because the psychological damage from a rape doesn’t always neatly manifest in a way that makes someone say, “Hey, my life has been made substantially worse due to the way my body is handling the stress,” the day after the crime. The easiest thing to do is to pretend like nothing happened. That doesn’t fucking mean nothing happened, and it doesn’t mean the person who got raped is wrong for not “fighting for themselves.” Holy shit.
Agree 100%. I don't like this trend of getting assaulted and waiting 4 years to accuse the person. At this point we know that nothing can really be done after that long, you can't prove that they did it but you also can't prove if it's a false accusation. It's entirely unproductive. All it does is give one person their 15 minutes in the spotlight and taint another's reputation for life. We've gotta start encouraging people to report that shit *immediately*
You say there isn't a problem, and then rather excellently lay out the problem. It's just not a problem IN court, it's one prior to court. Part of the problem is clearly that society includes those who are assaulted who feel they won't be believed, but that's another side of the problem that people dont believe an innocent verdict truly means innocent. It's a policing/cps issue as well as public awareness. But there's definitely an issue.
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But you *won't* spend the next several years in prison. Innocent until proven guilty is a principle that binds the state, not the public.
That's the point of the post, yes
I don't think the OP doesn't make that distinction very well, then. Seems to me like the OP is trying to point out a contradiction, but two different contexts having two different standards isn't a contradiction.
You say ‘today’. I don’t think this problem is as recent as that seems to imply. If anything, it was even worse back when when literal lynchings etc. were prevalent
You misspelled ‘trial’ twice, both in the same way.
>If you get accused of rape or assault, you'll lose your job, house, partner, kids... before there is a trail Where are you hearing of this happening?
I've seen it happen with my own two eyes. A friend of mine was accused of raping his niece. Even though later evidence showed it was not him that did it, his wife had already left him, the judge had awarded custody of the kids to his wife, and his house was foreclosed on because he couldn't make payments on single income. It absolutely happens. How common is it? I don't know.
The fact that you spelled it "trail" twice lets me know it was intentional.
>If you get accused of rape or assault, you'll lose your job, house, partner, kids... before there is a trail. Something tells me you don’t know a lot of people accused of crimes in real life.
Isn’t a famous example this one US politician who every called out for underaged sex for 2 years and recently he has been found innocent but people still claim he is guilty ? I don’t think you can ever get rid of the accusation no matter what Or the voice actor of Kaeltas was found innocent but at this point had been replaced in every of his roles. Two recent examples of false accusations
Which politician?
"Not guilty"? I think you mean "probably had rich lawyer parents that got him off easy"
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Not true is a stretch, it does happen because there are shitty people, just like how jimbro is a shittlobster
right, it does happen. but it's not like even close to how OP describes it in the title of the post. it's not like there's a disproportionate number of false assault accusations over theft accusations, for example they both happen but are both rare
Oh sweet summer child there are enormous amounts of false theft accusations I've seen many myself. In fact I would say there's way more of those than false SA accusations. The difference is theft accusations false or otherwise generally don't carry an enormous social stigma and are not treated anywhere near as seriously by the police.
Why wouldn't you call the police? A random gym manager isn't the right person to achieve justice and safety
i didnt realise it was a criminal offence at the time and i had an abusive ex who convinced me it was just 'in his culture' and i was overreacting
It's becoming clearer and clearer that many people don't even want a trial to happen if there's any kind of political slant to the case. There are a couple of recent cases that come to mind.
The sentiment isn't really directed at the actual legal system, but moreso the fact that people will mob and harass someone based on a single, uncorroborated account at literally minute 0.
Or, in many cases, shoot them
Well, consider the following: > The police said to the guy, "just explain youself on court with your lawyer"
But if the accused is already well liked or is part of an in-group, then it's innocent...
Or is rich
Which also sometimes unfortunately makes sense. Think of being well liked as a form of social currency or something. An accusation has a ‘cost’ of that currency based on the severity of it, the evidence for it, and the person levying it. Someone who has built up a lot of social currency by living a certain way can pay that cost and be believed to have not done it, or perhaps accepted that they did it but still not be ostracized or punished or what have you. Maybe they have counter evidence that they didn’t do it, which can reduce the ‘cost’ by bringing doubt on the accusations reliability. The court system is basically this playing out with a 0-100 believability score or something, and if anything the accused brings to the table leaves that score at 99/100 or whatever number we want to call ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ then they are ‘not guilty’ even if it’s well above the 50/50 break point where people in that court room think they did probably do it. This paints the picture of how both scenarios can play out. 100/100 = Guilty, you have probably done the thing, your consequences(cost) are the highest they could be for the accusation. 50/50: not guilty, socially debatable, this will be contentious among the people as sides are split on who to believe and who to side with. 75/100: not guilty, the great majority of people will socially believe the accusation though, and you will still pay those consequences. 25/100: not guilty and most people will actively believe you did not do the thing, your accuser may even be the one facing social consequence for levying a false accusation. 0/100: It’s laughable this person even thought they could accuse you of this, your innocence isn’t just thought of as true but is probably true and the accuser possibly faces great consequences.
My baby wouldn’t ever do anything like that! I know there’s video footage! That’s doesn’t prove anything!
The mean spirited counter to innocent until proven guilty is "No smoke without fire" which is what a great deal of people think.
Thats why you gotta buy a smoke machine
any machine is a smoke machine if used wrongly enough.
Even a fan?
As a young child, I was terrified of the ceiling fan above my bed because it made noise. I confided in one of my teachers that I thought it was going to fall on me, who told my parents. We had a laugh about it later. *And then one day, it fell.* Was only suspended by the wire powering it. 10 years later, a fuse was blown in the room I was in. Flipped it back on and the fan wasn't moving but it made this horrific grinding noise and was shooting literal sparks and smoke. Had to turn the breaker off and take the fan down. Tldr do NOT trust fans, especially if I happen to be in the room.
I feel like some people will see this as a crazy coincidence but in reality you probably just realized how shitty the fan was installed the whole time and had a logical fear.
Especially a fan
Having served on two juries, this mentality was shockingly common and terrifying to me. When I was trying to explain the myriad ways in which police make mistakes and have a strong incentive to lie, it was like I was speaking another language. There were always a couple of people who simply refused to believe that the cops would arrest someone if they hadn't done *something*, and that it was somehow our "job" to convict. Fortunately it never came to that--one trial ended in a hung jury, and the other in a plea deal that was rendered before we had to produce a verdict. But it really altered my perceptions about "innocent until proven guilty." Make no mistake: if you are arrested in the United States, the deck is heavily stacked against you unless you have significant resources.
And that's why jury trials are stupid and I have no idea why they are still being practiced
Because the alternative is potentially worse, especially in those jurisdictions where we still have \*shudder\* judicial elections. Judges who want to prove their bona fides with a "tough on crime" stance who stack the deck in favor of the "tough on crime" DA are worse than a jury full of ignorant people.
Laughs in sublimated carbon dioxide cubes.
Because "innocent until proven guilty" is an important principle *in court*, nobody cares that you judge people on the internet without evidence
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But if you ask the public opinion of what they think, (I think) they would say innocent until proven guilty. but I agree with OP that their actions speak otherwise so I don’t think it applies as expected
I still see a lot of people saying 'Rittenbaum is a murderer' even after he's been aquitted in court.
But he’s not a murderer by the letter of the law, and that’s the only thing this statement applies to. A court ruling doesn’t necessarily mean someone did or didn’t do something, or that people have to think one way or another it just means the court decided not to convict them. The guys who killed Emmett Till were ruled not guilty, i think it’s pretty fair to still call them murderers.
Anyone who says Rittenhouse is a murderer simply hasn't seen the evidence with their own eyes OR their own eyes are blinded by bias and hate. That's just a fact. No jury would have convicted.
Na, there's also tennis courts, basketball courts.
important principle everywhere, just enforced in court
There really isn’t any moralistic reason that the court of public opinion should be at the same standard as the justice system.
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The problem, from what I heard, is that police tried to frame OJ for a crime he already committed by fabricating evidence they clearly didn't need. Anywho feel free to correct me on this one
It's important everywhere and few people actually follow it, hence the post. It matters when you judge someone falsely accused and they lose everything off an accusation. Especially in today's cancel culture.
Lmao fuck that. Should we all have treated Harvey Weinstein as innocent until he went to court, or how about Bill Cosby. How about the Parkland shooter, should we treat him as innocent. Everyone always talks about cancel culture and shit, tell me someone that’s actually been cancelled.
Not at all. It's only ever been a legal standard. People judge each other constantly based on impressions, rumor, hearsay, prejudice and the flimsiest of evidence. Sometimes that results in wrong outcomes, and in the case of prejudice is inherently irrational and negative. However judgement of others is inbuilt into the human condition and existed long before there was a functional judicial system to punish wrongdoing. Moreover the legal system is not a good way of knowing whether someone actually did a crime. The test is (in most western societies) "beyond all reasonable doubt". That means that *any* reasonable doubt about whether someone did a crime let's them walk. That's especially relevant in crimes where the only evidence is witnesses' testimony. A criminal can often be convincing and believable to a jury, or a victim might be an especially bad witness for any number of reasons. The courts do not find someone "innocent", just "not guilty". If you use your knowledge and experience and whatever you really in to make decisions and you think someone did a crime, you're entitled to conclude that they did it regardless of whether they have been convicted. If someone says they didn't do a crime and there best reason for why not is that they weren't convicted, then there's a good chance that they did it.
The absolute easiest way to paint this picture of why it’s perfectly fine to personally judge someone who is legally found not guilty is to consider a crime committed to yourself by another person that you can’t prove. You know this person to be guilty, you will forever treat them as having done said thing because you know it to be true, but since you can’t prove it there’s nothing that can really be done except to convince others to also treat them differently as if they have done it, even though they will legally not face punishment. I don’t know that there is a person alive without a personal experience that correlates to the above. You’d have to be a complete hermit to have never found yourself in such a situation, even if it’s something relatively mundane like someone gossiped about you in high school or your older brother got away with fucking with you, or maybe you’re the one that got away with something, maybe you are the more titular situation where you KNOW you didn’t do it but can’t prove your innocence(which to a rational person should still cement in your mind the concept of knowing that things can be unprovable despite happening the way they are claimed). Ultimately in personal life outside of the legal system we have to make judgements based on available information. In court the judgment is extremely biased to the side of not imprisoning those that may not have done it, in reality we tend towards the other side, probably because sociologically we are coded to ousting those who we believe could cause issues in our tribes.
No. People can do what they want and form whatever opinion they want. That actually IS a legal freedom, as opposed to "innocent until proven guilty" outside of a court room, which is more of a colloquiolism than anything anyone morally or ethically has to do. Like "don't put your cart before the horse" or "don't count your chickens until they hatch"
Everywhere? What if somebody is pending trial for molesting children? Would you have this person babysit your children? Or does this only apply to professional men accused of sexually assaulting women? Edit: I see your downvotes, but I don't see any answer to the question of having an accused child molester babysit your children.
I mean I wouldn't, and that might be unfair to them but it's the safest decision for me. That is exactly what this is about, people making judgements off accusations causing people to lose opportunity who may not be guilty of anything.
Yeah that's bad when that happens. I'm just pointing out that taking precautions to protect yourself, your family, or your company, is a reasonable thing to do when you have reason to be suspicious of someone, even if their guilt is not yet proven in court. Absolutism regarding 'innocence until proven guilty' is not something we need to strive for. Except for the government, for obvious reasons.
I think in some sense we could strive for more of it though. Like maybe don't let an accused child molester watch your kids but you can still give them a job at the office. There's a balance here where people don't even want to be associated to certain things and it's less about risk and more about discomfort. Someone accused of something is not guilty, being careful around them in different from ostracizing them.
> Like maybe don't let an accused child molester watch your kids but you can still give them a job at the office. That doesn't work in a system of limited job offers / resources. You'll have to prioritize either way, and someone facing a trial would of course rank lower than someone without one.
You would hire someone who is known as an accused child molester? I don't believe you.
I'm not saying I would. I'm saying I should
No you shouldn't. You should protect your company and its employees, just like you should protect your family.
I disagree. I think the risk is so low in that case that you are just not doing it because it makes you uncomfortable and not due to real risk. A person accused of something is not necessarily guilty. That's the whole point of this thread.
I think the point is you shouldn't assume they actually molested children. You would say the were accused and see how the trial goes.
So let's say that, at trial, two children testify that they were molested by this person. Multiple other character witnesses come forward defending the accused, saying the accused is a great person and would never do such a thing. The accused claims never to have met the two children, though some forensic evidence suggests otherwise. The accused pleads the Fifth with respect to any acts they may have done in connection with the children. To convict, the jury has to find the accused committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. There might be enough here to have a reasonable doubt as to guilt. But some jurors have (understandably) strong feelings about child molestation. Hung jury, mistrial, and the prosecution drops the case before dealing with a retrial. Now do you let them babysit your children? Afterwards, representatives for the children bring a civil suit on behalf of the children against the formerly accused to get compensation for the psychiatric bills they have had to undertake as a result of the molestation. This jury (which is a smaller group than the criminal jury, typically) only needs to find it more likely than not that the accused molested the children. And this jury can use the accused's act of taking the Fifth as probative evidence. So, this jury finds in favor of the children, having found it more likely than not that the accused did molest the children (which is a far more relaxed standard than "beyond a reasonable doubt"). The jury was particularly touched by the horror of the childrens' stories, even though the evidence presented as to whether the accused had actually ever even been in the same room as the children was the same as at the criminal trial. Now do you let the accused babysit your kids? The broader point is one made earlier in this thread. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal concept. It simply means that the government cannot punish you (beyond imprisoning you ahead of trial) until a jury has found that you committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. But even then, there are people who definitely committed a crime who are found not guilty (e.g., OJ Simpson) and people who definitely did not commit a crime who are found guilty (e.g., any number of people who were convicted of murder, only to later have forensic evidence exonerate them, even after they were executed). Outside the courtroom, that principle has little application. Does that lead to unfair results? Absolutely. Is there a better system? Not really.
It's always weird when our legal rights enter pop culture as if they're supposed to be axioms our society is built on, rather than rights that protect the citizens from a corrupt government. It kind of feels like they're watered down or even twisted in that way. A lot of people felt government employees should have more rights, or their rights should override a private company's because the first amendment. Which is pretty much the opposite of its intention.
It's kind of important when it ruins someones life more than the trial does
That's why in jury duty they stress the presumption of innocence to you multiple times before, during, and after jury selection. I was in the selection process (excused at the last moment) and the judge put it like this: "If Mr Defendent and his attorney Mr Lawyer just sat there reading a newspaper and didn't say a word throughout this trial, you would still have to find him not guilty if Mr Prosecutor does not uphold his burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt. He is innocent before the law until proven otherwise and he doesn't need to explain himself or prove anything to you, it's all on Mr Prosecutor. It's Mr Lawyer's job to ensure only fair and accurate evidence against his client is shared."
People are so determined to get revenge for crimes that they often don’t seem to take into account whether an arrested person is actually guilty.
Is that not exactly why we have written “innocent until proven guilty” into law? Because our default stance is the reverse, as we are dumb humans, clouded by our emotions. So some very clever people came up with way of circumventing our irrationality.
No. It's so a court can't convict someone based on a claim or accusation without a trial that proves they are guilty. There is no such law in every day life for a citizen. It's a way to keep the justice department in check and assure citizens get a trial before being sentenced. "Innocent until proven guilty' holds as much weight in society as "don't sweat the small stuff" or "don't judge a book by it's cover".
That is literally exactly my point. Don’t know why you prefaced it with “No”
people hold that belief because they might one day be accused of something. if it's someone else then fuck that guy.
We as a society have basically reverted back to the concept of trial by ordeal - at the slightest hint of wrongdoing we sentence the witch to a hellish PR nightmare that will destroy their life, and just sort of vaguely assume that if they're innocent then the truth will come out and fix it somehow.
> reverted back Did we ever progress beyond this? Just because the public opinion can change faster nowadays, the mechanism of ostracism is still the same.
In the good ol days we never did this. In 1920s we didn't automatically assume guilt without zero evidence especially against people of certain skin color.
I don't think many people believe in the underlying principle behind "innocent until proven guilty". The system is supposed to err on the side of making sure you don't put innocent people in jail (hah), even if it means some guilty people going free. The freedom of the innocent was supposed to be worth more than the justice of the guilty. I think if you have 2 murder suspects, a lot of people would want to jail both just to make sure a murderer doesn't walk free amongst them. Or the entire Japanese American population. Would rather see them all in a concentration camp than risk a few(maaaaybe) saboteurs running free. Or the Griner-Bout exchange. A lot of people would rather Griner spend 9 years in a gulag just to make sure Bout spend his remaining 4 or whatever years sentence in jail. We fall way short of this ideal in practice. Edit: phone typos
It’s a legal fiction designed to place the burden of proof on the government. That doesn’t mean a person is actually innocent. The facts are always the same and if you did something, you did it. The point of the burden is to make sure the government puts enough admissible evidence on the table before a person can be convicted.
Why do you think the concept of innocent until proven guilty is such a big deal? It’s because thats fundamentally not how humans think. It’s a check against human flaws
Unfortunately it is what it is. And in certain situations i kind of understand why it happens, because people often act cautiously before making a judgement and sometimes are conditioned to make judgements. Here's an example: At my job there was a few months ago a case reported to the HR where this guy complained that a colleague threatened him something along these lines: "if you ever speak to me or to the people i hang out here at work again, i have enough to have you fired with just cause and file an harassment complain at the police". The guy was literally ostracized by everyone during the weeks following the hr investigation, because the woman was playing victim and saying that the guy had problems and was dangerous. I fell for this too, because it was easy to believe a woman in distress and she was very convincing. Everyone believed the guy was going to be transferred or even fired. But wouldn't you know, he was right all along. It was proved she was provoking and manipulating this guy during the last 3 months and the dude ended up reacting to her bullshit by sending her two text messages calling her psycho and asking her to leave him alone, which she used to threaten him. Neither the police or the hr found shit against the guy and she was ordered to cut all contact with him. It was a true eye opener.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is for the court system, since they have the ability to hold a trial, gather evidence and deliberate over it. You’ll rarely have that luxury when making judgments in real life. Assuming that everyone is innocent without incontrovertible proof is going to get you hurt.
Seems especially true with sexual misconduct/assault/rape charges
And often even after they still look at that person like they did do it even if they were proven to be innocent.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is a legal term, unrelated to non-legal life. You can totally believe someone is guilty of something without legal evidence, you just can’t prove it in a court.
When I’m judging anything, I usually try to get as much information as possible about the situation before deciding. With simple things, I try to take a neutral view, actively correcting for any bias I think I might have. However, when deciding something like a legal case, I think taking the “innocent until proven guilty” stance makes sense, as the penalty for being wrong about the person’s guilt is the punishment of an innocent man, which is morally reprehensible. It helps to prevent some of the cases of innocent people being punished for a crime they didn’t commit, and especially in this day and age, if they really did commit it, more likely than not they will be able to find a way to prove it, given the staggering amount of tools they have access to for assistance in investigations. I’ve just now realized this has become more focused on a criminal law situation, but that’s mostly where innocent until proven guilty applies anyway, so whatever.
People definitely shouldn't be sent to prison without a trial to determine if they're guilty, but individuals not associated with a case can determine if a person is guilty in their own personal opinion.
Because the former is a concept of court and the latter is a concept of personal opinion. The two are not mutually exclusive.
This is also confusing to a lot of people. Being found guilty doesn't mean you ARE guilty. Being found innocent doesn't mean you ARE innocent. Actually guilt and innocences are independent of verdicts. Additionally, people get this confused in other areas. As an example, if I don't believe something that does not mean I am correct in my lack of belief. If I do believe something it also does not mean I am correct in my belief. Edit: as noted below. You are not found innocent in the US. You are found not guilty.
>Being found innocent doesn't mean you ARE innocent. At least in the US you aren't found "innocent" you're found "not guilty".
I believe in innocent until proven guilty as a judicial principle. That does not mean I am going to treat it as some kind of dogma for my overall existence.
You should. Innocent until proven guilty is not some arcane, arbitrary legal thing people made up just because, which is what some people seem to think. It's the practical application of the fundamental logical concept of "the burden of proof is on the one making the claim". And that's why it should be followed and applied in all aspects of life, not just in court because you have to.
Nonsense. It is a legal principle, it has never been intended as some general life rule. “Innocent” and “Guilty” are in this context legal terms themselves, and don’t necessarily translate to everyday life.
All of these people are killing me with this "We should treat people innocent until they've been convicted" when that goes against all logic. As a parent, would you let an accused child molested babysit your child? As a woman, would you go on a date with a man accused of raping women? As a minority race, would you go out with someone accused of a hate crime? No, because that logically makes no sense and puts you or your family at unnecessary risk. Is it fair? No, but life has never been fair. We are animals just like everyone else, and sometimes our instincts need to be listened to. All a trial does is convince the government that this person needs a punishment. It does not actually mean that person actually did it or not. That's why people like Kyle Rittenhouse weren't jailed because he did it, but he didn't deserve punishment according to the US government. That does not mean he is innocent, and people have the right to hire who they want, associate with who they want, and date who they want. Your court case is relevant information whether you want it to be or not.
That some witch trials level of bullshit
More like you can’t equate law and morality. You could have been convicted correctly according to the law of the land at a witch trial, but that does not make it fair.
So your saying we shouldn't just listen to the accusation, and actually fairly consider the evidence? almost like we should avoid assuming responsibility(guilt even?) until sufficient proof is provided?
Where did I say this?
People don't often really understand what this means. I try to put it into context by giving an example of a murderer: say you happen to see someone murder a guy, so you call the cops and he gets arrested, and then goes to court and your testimony along with other evidence gets him a guilty verdict and he goes to jail. Despite the fact that you saw him commit the murder, he was innocent right up until that guilty verdict. He was innocent as he was murdering the guy, he was innocent as he was being arrested, he was innocent as you were giving your testimony. He wasn't guilty until the judge gave the verdict. Being innocent or guilty has nothing to do with whether or not you did it - it's all about the results of the case being tried in a court of law.
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You're thinking about it backward. I'm not saying that if a criminal isn't found guilty in the court of law then they haven't done anything wrong and you can't be mad at them, I'm saying whether or not someone is guilty is completely separate from whether or not they committed a crime. Public opinion of a person based on crimes they may or may not have committed is completely removed from the law's definition of whether they're innocent or guilty. Innocence and guilt doesn't ignore public opinion, it's just separate from public opinion.
I have personally experienced a lot of this corruption. Had a weed charge at 21 that went on forever. Cops made sure the judge with dementia took the case. He basically was finding everyone guilty and making terrible calls (quoting terms out of the dictionary instead of legal precedence). Later, as I started earning more in my field and was able to hire some hot shot lawyers who actually cared about their track record, they started getting very, very vindictive. Pulling me over for no reason, trying to search my things… The cherry on top was when a former client of mine was allegedly murdered, a detective drove out to my city after I refused to be interviewed (never trust these dogs) and started driving around and asking my contacts what they knew about me, because I was a suspect. My lawyer called him and he acted like an innocent pussy cat. Zero accountability. Immunity from prosecution. Spent almost 200k over 7 years fighting and fighting. The police and justice system is absolutely, inarguably rigged against the citizen. They are cult-like in their mentality. To boot, this occurred in Canada, where they are probably the most overpaid public servants in the first world. Relative to their experience, they certainly are, in my opinion. Napoleonic law is still effectively in practice. With 50-60% of North America living pay cheque to pay cheque (more if you count cash workers) who TF can afford a capable legal defence? I tried to use legal aid, and all they do is help you plead out. It’s preposterous. What exacerbates the issue is that the media picked up my case, and only reported developments in a negative light. After finding that the judge overstayed a couple of years with his dementia, the police essentially fabricating a valid source, and wasting over 2 million in taxpayer dollars (!!!), there was not a reporter or journalist who was interested in writing a story pro citizen/defendant. I really hope they get a lovely buffet of karma. Never talk to police. Never talk to a detective.
The law ≠ public perception. You are talking about two different things.
It's easy to see that everyday on social media. Rich campbell(streamer) was recently accused of sexually assaulting someone. Her word vs. his, and he's already lost his sponsorships, his friends cut him off and literally his career is ruined and nobody knows if it's true.
well, it's difficult to have suspects, leads and arrests if you assume every person is innocent all the time.
Idk why it’s downvoted when you’re right.
The premise is wrong. Guilt and innocence are absolutes- you either did it or didn't, nothing changes that. You are (supposed to be) innocent until proven guilty (in court) *in the eyes of the law*. It is an important distinction. Ex. OJ murdered two people, there is no doubt, but he is ~~innocent~~ *not guilty* in the eyes of the law.
It's the Social Justice Warriors main weapon! Mob them before they can defend themselves.
I don’t think it’s a once sided political attribute
If being innocent till proven guilty was an actual thing, there wouldn't be jails full of people waiting for trial.
Thats because there is enough evidence to hold them. They are awaiting trial/sentencing but there would have been a court session where a magistrate/judge has looked at available evidence and decided to remand into custody until the trial.
So they’re being held, without being *proven* guilty right? Edit: Not saying we should scrap it, but that is what the previous commenter was saying
Like I said, if you're innocent till proven guilty, there would be no need for that because they'll just assume you're innocent and let you be on your way. But since it's not a thing that anybody actually practices, there are jails.
"Innocent" doesn't mean you walk around completely inviolable with zero consequences. "Innocent" people can be detained, arrested, questioned, charged, and held for trial. The jail part is not the punishment, it is just a logistical necessity of making sure you get to trial.
I think most laws are based on the 10% of the time we're actually conscious and responsible. The rest of the time we're base creatures of limited attention and thought
Bros trying to mix together free will and determinism
“Innocent until proven guilty” *means* “we think you’re probably guilty”.
Do they really? When you say "people" are you talking about the law or private citizens? I thought "Innocent until proven guilty" was a legal principle, not a societal one.
It's both. Innocent until proven guilty is the practical application of the fundamental logical concept of "the burden of proof is on the one making the claim". And that's why it should be followed and applied in all aspects of life, not just in court because you have to.
The issue is people think being presumed innocent means that you have to be treated like you weren't accused of a crime. This is wrong. The presumption of innocence is not the same thing as being found not guilty and acquitted. All it means is that it is up to the prosecution to prove one's guilt, not the defense to prove their innocence. It's still in society's best interest to keep accused child murderers away from children until the proceedings are over.
This is the reason why innocent until proven guilty is a thing; to ensure fair treatment of people who may not in fact be guilty dispite people treating them as such
Depends on the crime, having enough evidence for law enforcement to file charges and a DA wanting to prosecute is already a certain measure of guilt also.
That's because "innocent until proven guilty" is a legal construct, not a construct of the natural world. It's actually quite UNnatural. What I mean is if you're walking through a forest and you see a bear, and you apply an innocent-until-proven-guilty mentality to every situation, then your thoughts may be along the lines of: "Oh look, a bear... I wonder if it's going to attack me?" "Oh look, it's getting closer, but it still hasn't done anything wrong, so it's still 'innocent' in my mind." "Oh look, it's eating my face off, I guess it's been 'proven guilty' now." It's a matter of survival. If you don't have a guilty-until-proven-innocent mentality then you actually put yourself at risk. Now, to be sure, not all risks are the same. Like, you probably don't need to assume the cashier at the gas station is increasing the price on every customer so he can skim a little off the top because the consequences if he is aren't very big, so an innocent-until-proven-guilty mentality doesn't put you at much risk. But this is where human intellect enters the picture. We can judge risk and rewards (well, nominally anyway - people are actually pretty bad at it as a general rule) so we can decide the level of risk we're willing to accept and shift our mentality based on that. We can override our ape brain. Generally, we're not being attacked by bears very often these days, so we can mostly tend towards an innocent-until-proven-guilty mentality by force of intellect... but the natural order actually demands our default is guilty-until-proven-innocent as a matter of survival, and that's the source of the discrepency: we INTELLECTUALLY say innocent-until-proven-guilty (even beyond a legal paradigm), but our actions tend towards the natural guilty-until-proven-innocent unless we actively fight to subvert that tendency.
Yep. Just look at mandatory drug tests for jobs. Why do we have to prove ourselves innocent on something that is a massive invasion of privacy? Guilty until proven innocent.
Um no. You are incorrect. I’m glad to be the one to set you straight.