Innocent Until Proven Guilty
According to an article by the AP on the CBS News website: “(AP) The man charged in the slaying of late-term abortion provider George Tiller said Thursday he's ‘being treated as a criminal’ even though he hasn't been convicted of anything.” Well wake up my friend. I’ll bet you didn’t complain much about others being treated as criminals, even if they had not yet been convicted. This also includes physicians who perform abortions.
Sometimes the government doesn’t even have enough evidence to indict someone, yet they “leak” information to the news media which suggests heavily that a certain person has committed some sort of terrible criminal act. This type of immoral activity is so common as to be considered almost normal in the world of politics and elected officials keeping their jobs.
I got a letter the other day from the government. It said that I was being considered as a potential jury candidate, so they asked me various invasive questions including my ethnicity. I answered, but I wrote on the response form that I considered my answers to be confidential information. I don’t particularly want to serve on a jury, but it is the duty of all patriotic citizens after all. So I will do so if I am called.
In most cases when the government goes to the trouble of indicting someone of a crime, in fact these people are guilty as hell. In many cases they have done lots of other illegal acts for which the government doesn’t have enough evidence for an indictment or of which the government has no knowledge. Most of these bastards are a menace to society. Really.
But not all people who are accused are guilty. That is the big problem.
Eye witness testimony has a very high inaccuracy rate, even when the people are genuinely trying to tell the truth. Crime labs have made lots of mistakes, and others have even been caught intentionally providing incorrect information about crime data like finger prints or bullet vs. gun identification. If it was your kid, or even you, who was being accused and then indicted, you would have a greater appreciation for the American justice system which tries to do everything possible to insure that innocent people are never convicted.
All of the above said, it is indeed true that in real life the idea of people being considered innocent until proven guilty by a jury of your peers has not caught on very well with the news media, or for that matter even by the common man. This does not mean that we should abandon the concept. No, but the knowledge that in fact many people are treated as guilty even before they are convicted or in some cases before they are even indicted will help us to avoid this mistake.
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Sometimes the government doesn’t even have enough evidence to indict someone, yet they “leak” information to the news media which suggests heavily that a certain person has committed some sort of terrible criminal act. This type of immoral activity is so common as to be considered almost normal in the world of politics and elected officials keeping their jobs.
I got a letter the other day from the government. It said that I was being considered as a potential jury candidate, so they asked me various invasive questions including my ethnicity. I answered, but I wrote on the response form that I considered my answers to be confidential information. I don’t particularly want to serve on a jury, but it is the duty of all patriotic citizens after all. So I will do so if I am called.
In most cases when the government goes to the trouble of indicting someone of a crime, in fact these people are guilty as hell. In many cases they have done lots of other illegal acts for which the government doesn’t have enough evidence for an indictment or of which the government has no knowledge. Most of these bastards are a menace to society. Really.
But not all people who are accused are guilty. That is the big problem.
Eye witness testimony has a very high inaccuracy rate, even when the people are genuinely trying to tell the truth. Crime labs have made lots of mistakes, and others have even been caught intentionally providing incorrect information about crime data like finger prints or bullet vs. gun identification. If it was your kid, or even you, who was being accused and then indicted, you would have a greater appreciation for the American justice system which tries to do everything possible to insure that innocent people are never convicted.
All of the above said, it is indeed true that in real life the idea of people being considered innocent until proven guilty by a jury of your peers has not caught on very well with the news media, or for that matter even by the common man. This does not mean that we should abandon the concept. No, but the knowledge that in fact many people are treated as guilty even before they are convicted or in some cases before they are even indicted will help us to avoid this mistake.
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