Generally speaking, "innocent until proven guilty" is a cornerstone in most legal systems. This has been the case, literally, for millennia, dating back to Roman times.
It is also one of the UN's human rights, and is enshrined in several countries' constitutions.
I disagree. The UN human rights items are regularly ignored and broken. In 2022. By multiple countries. And no one bats an eye except for the persecuted. There is no world police, no cosmic justice, just politics.
You could publish a dozen similar anecdotes every day for a decade. What's unusual about this one is that the girl was stupid enough to later admit she'd been lying.
> Generally speaking, "innocent until proven guilty" is a cornerstone in most legal systems. This has been the case, literally, for millennia, dating back to Roman times.
> It is also one of the UN's human rights, and is enshrined in several countries' constitutions.
> The Soviet Constitution included a series of civil and political rights. Among these were the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly and the right to religious belief and worship. In addition, the Constitution provided for freedom of artistic work, protection of the family, inviolability of the person and home, and the right to privacy. In line with the Marxist-Leninist ideology of the government, the Constitution also granted social and economic rights not provided by constitutions in some capitalist countries. Among these were the rights to work, rest and leisure, health protection, care in old age and sickness, housing, education, and cultural benefits.
Of course, having the rights in the constitution didn't mean anyone was allowed to exercise those rights, and they most certainly weren't. "Innocent until proven guilty" is a set of words that people believe in saying, but it is not a set of beliefs that people are willing to put into practice. It has nothing to do with the legal system of any country in the world. For most crimes, proof of guilt cannot even theoretically exist. (As was true of Elizabeth Coast.)
This was covered fairly extensively in my first link:
> What’s doing the work in many of the convictions, I suspect, is that the very ubiquity of the risk makes factfinders realize that — if we were to constantly consider this generalized risk, in the absence of more specific information — a wide range of crimes couldn’t be effectively prosecuted. That’s especially true of child molestation and rape, but it’s also true of many sorts of felons’ possession of guns, robberies, and the like. It’s always possible, and not extremely unlikely, that a police officer was just trying to frame someone he already thought was a bad guy.
> But I think many people (again, deliberately or subconsciously) are unwilling to see acquittals in all such cases. A seemingly disinterested supposed victim’s testimony thus tends to be credited (unless the victim seems untrustworthy for other reasons, such as the victim’s own past criminal record). A police officer’s testimony tends to be credited, at least by many jurors. And this is so even though there is good reason for doubt, simply because whenever we are dealing with human testimony there is good reason for doubt.
> So... the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard ends up being, in many cases, considerably less defendant-protective than one might think. Maybe that’s bad, or maybe it’s a necessary evil
>You could publish a dozen similar anecdotes every day for a decade. What's unusual about this one is that the girl was stupid enough to later admit she'd been lying.
So? Once again, they are anecdotes. I can similarly provide thousands of anecdotes showing presumption of innocence. It means nothing except that those cases happened.
Do you have any proof "it is not a set of beliefs that people are willing to put into practice" on a systematic scale?
>> You could publish a dozen similar anecdotes every day for a decade.
> So? Once again, they are anecdotes.
"Anecdote" doesn't just mean "something I'd prefer not to have to think about", you know. Being very common makes the event systematic.
> Do you have any proof "it is not a set of beliefs that people are willing to put into practice" on a systematic scale?
Yes, we've been talking about it for a while.
> I can similarly provide thousands of anecdotes showing presumption of innocence. It means nothing except that those cases happened.
That's... not how logic works. On the one hand, we have hundreds of thousands of cases of people being railroaded for crimes they didn't commit based on no solid evidence. On the other hand, we have tens of millions of cases of people being railroaded for crimes they did commit, also based on no solid evidence.
But let's assume that second group consists only of convictions where the defendant's guilt was somehow actually proved. That wouldn't mean the system operates on the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty -- that claim is already falsified by the existence of the first group. It would mean that proof of guilt is often provided even though it isn't required.
The thing is that when dealing with something on the scale of the justice system even a hundred examples don't mean it occurs more than a fraction of a percent of the time. When assessing anecdotes to try and determine event frequency you need to understand how the anecdotes were sampled.
Generally speaking, "innocent until proven guilty" is a cornerstone in most legal systems. This has been the case, literally, for millennia, dating back to Roman times.
It is also one of the UN's human rights, and is enshrined in several countries' constitutions.