: Could you provide us with more context? Are you referring to how accused parties should be treated prior to a fair trial? Hi DDN;
the way I read this, it's a comparisson between the U.S. and U.K. systems (or perhaps the U.K. system has changed?). In the US, you're presumed innocent, and the burden of proof consequently rests on the prosecution. The alternative system is the assumption of guilt until innocence is proven. in this system, the burden of proof rests on the defense.
(snip)
: But, alas, teaching you good debating/thinking skills is the furthest thing from your school's agenda.
As some recent conversations in here demonstrate quite accurately! ;-)
: What does Guilty Until Proven Guilty mean? If jury or judge finds defendant NOT GUILTY, then defendant is still guilty according to the "Guilty Until Proven Guilty" viewpoint. How does an accused innocent defendant ever become known as Innocent with this model?
I suspect that was a typo. However, it raises an important distinction. In the US system, the accused is never declared "innocent," only "not guilty." Sierra raised a similar issue in her response. The assumption is that people are not really innocent, only that there is insufficient information on which to convict. The alternate system (assume guilt until innocence is proved) can lead to demonstration of innocence through falsification of the null hypothesis of guilt (e.g. the Guilford four).
I suspect this difference is related to the differences in philosophy between the Puritain founders of the US and the monarchists in the UK. It's an interesting topic of research. The puritains were a bunch of taght-arsed, self-righteous, smug little twerps who believed that everybody was doomed to hell and infected with "original sin." Their attitude was tempered somewhat by "enlightenment" era thinkers (otherwise our system really would be "guilty until proven guilty!) in the inclusion of the assumption of innocence, although as many have pointed out, this assumption only exists on paper and not in practice. In theory, the US system minimizes what are called "type I errors" (false inclusion) and the UK system minimizes "type II errors" (false exclusion). In other words, the US system tries to avoid convicting the innocent, and the UK system tries to avoid releasing the guilty. In practice, both systems are corrupted by public opinion, including racism, classism, nationalism, and xenophobia of all sorts.
I tend to agree with your comments concerning the pressure to conform- we are basically herd animals, and a huge number of people seem to want that situation to continue. Damn. Sorry I can't really end on a positive note, except to say that in geological, evolutionary, and astronomical time scales, none of this is permanent. ;-)
-Floyd
