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Innocent until proven guilty. Gotta love this paragraph: “There is a lot of evidence, but it needs to be proven,” she said. What's the evidence?
by dogruck 9y ago
Innocent until proven guilty. Gotta love this paragraph: “There is a lot of evidence, but it needs to be proven,” she said.
What's the evidence?
- pvg 9y agoInnocent until proven guilty. This is a principle of the US criminal justice system not a law of newspaper reporting and/or nature.
- parineum 9y agoIt's a principle of the US criminal justice system that is derived from a moral intuition of justice. I hate seeing the US policy discarded because it's "irrelevant" to the context. The basis of the law is a moral issue that is always relevant. If murder wasn't illegal it'd still be wrong. If you want to disagree with the moral principle, go ahead (but I suspect you'll sound like a tyrant).
- jack9 9y ago> It's a principle of the US criminal justice system that is derived from a moral intuition of justice. Morals are about value systems. Moral intuition is a paradox, as there is a multitude of moral value systems. Innocent until proven guilty is an American ethical precept.
- dom0 9y ago> Innocent until proven guilty is an American ethical precept. B-7, miss! This concept predates Americans by a number of years; it certainly wasn't invented there. The idea can be traced to ancient Greek and was already applied by the Romans.
- quuquuquu 9y agoInteresting, thanks for the knowledge. So interesting how societies of all time periods have due process for some, and slavery/war for others
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- jack9 9y ago> This concept predates Americans by a number of years; it certainly wasn't invented there. That happens to also be true.
- yorwba 9y agoThere are two factors that go into "innocent until proven guilty". One is basic reasoning: if you only know that a crime was committed, anyone is just as likely to have done it, so you need evidence to find the perpetrator. The other is the idea that it's worse to punish someone innocent than to let the guilty go unpunished. The second part is quite interesting, because it would be suboptimal for rational agents. If humans were rational decision makers, the reaction to a crime should be chosen to balance out the damage, so that nobody can derive a benefit from criminal behavior. Then failure to punish would be equally severe as unjust punishment, and everyone should be treated according to their probability of guilt. However, humans react much more strongly to losing something they already have than to not gaining it in the first place. So if you have a fine of $10,000 to distribute among 100 people with 1% probability of guilt, they will complain much more about the $100 they have to pay than when nobody pays anything, which means that one of them gets away with whatever crime deserved the $10,000 in the first place. If the situation is different, e.g. when you are just deciding whether to write an article about some as yet unproven allegation, the same considerations don't necessarily apply. That doesn't make the general principle completely irrelevant, but it does mean that your standard of proof doesn't have to be quite as strict.
- oh_sigh 9y ago> If humans were rational decision makers, the reaction to a crime should be chosen to balance out the damage, so that nobody can derive a benefit from criminal behavior Your example doesn't follow from this. In your example 99 innocent people are losing $100 because of a crime they didn't commit, and the perpetrator is making $9900 from their crime. So the perpetrator definitely still has profits from the crime if the punishment is spread out over multiple people.
- yorwba 9y agoThanks for noticing that, I should have actually done the math instead of just relying on my intuition. Now I wonder what the actual optimal punishment strategy is.
- pvg 9y agois derived from a moral intuition of justice Sort of. It's a technical detail of US criminal justice. If it was some moral basis of all justice, you'd have to explain why civil justice is 'immoral'. I hate seeing the US policy discarded because it's "irrelevant" I don't think anyone did that - if anything, you're seem to be elevating something you're very familiar with to some sort of universal principle mainly on the basis of that familiarity. And anyone who disagrees is a tyrant, somehow? We make all sorts of nuanced judgements, even about other people's criminality, all the time. Sure, it's best not to judge without basis or too hastily or uncharitably or you name it. But few things outside actual criminal trials require 'proof beyond reasonable doubt'. That would be silly and impractical. Many people, for instance, believe OJ Simpson is guilty of murder and they're neither immoral nor tyrants for thinking it. Trotting out 'innocent until proven guilty' is even weirder and less applicable as some sort of substitute for 'there's a thing in this newspaper article I don't like or agree with'. One can just say that instead of reciting some strident and inapplicable phrase.
- topmonk 9y agoMorality, morality morality, right, wrong, good, evil, bla bla bla... oh and if you disagree with me you should be shamed and ridiculed. This is just an appeal to the mob to punish those that have a different value system then you. It works because there are enough people in the mob that agree with you that they know the absolute sense of what right and wrong is, that they all will punish those that don't share the same belief system, and praise you for sharing theirs. So you get that tiny instinctual reward because you have shown yourself to be a valued member of the crowd through upvotes. And you'll also get an instinctual reward due to the sense of power, because those that oppose you are punished get downvoted to oblivion. This completes the circle, and keeps the mob mentality self sustaining. However, no intellectual progress comes out of it, and in fact it makes everyone dumber by rewarding only those who praise the mob.
- mosselman 9y agoWonderfully worded, thank you.
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- oh_sigh 9y agoThe alternative is to live in a world where a few "strong men"/alpha males dominate over many people through fear and intimidation. I can't say one system is inherently more moral than the other but it does seem obvious which system is better for the average person
- simonh 9y agoThat's al well and good. Quite right. But that's a legal principle to be applied in a court of law, and also a principle applied and honoured int eh Brazilian courts. Nobody has been found guilty of anything yet. Everyone involved in this incident, if it even happened, is still a free person with protections under the law. However there is prima fascia evidence a crime may have been committed and that is being reported and investigated. What exactly, specifically about any of that is being objected to? I really can't tell. All I can see in criticism of the article is demagogic posturing.
- Robelius 9y agoInnocent unless proven guilty. Until until is normally how people treat a suspect rather than a mindset where it’s innocent unless proven guilty.
- oblio 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence It's a Roman principle, not an American one.
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- pvg 9y agoI don't think I ascribed a nationality to the principle but I'm happy to inspire you to spend more time on Wikipedia.
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- sidlls 9y agoYou should write it "principle," as neither of the civilizations applied it uniformly or consistently enough to merit the term.
- secfirstmd 9y agoUnless it involves Gitmo or drone assassinations.
- alsetmusic 9y ago> What's the evidence? You quoted the article, so I assume you read it. It states that "… the gold miners went to a bar in a near the border with Colombia, and bragged about the killings." Also, that "[t]he indigenous affairs bureau conducted some initial interviews in the town…" In this case, the evidence appears to be a report of public acknowledgement of the crime and statements given in private interviews. Perhaps you were asking about the content of the interviews, but you didn't specify.
- meddlepal 9y agoThat's not evidence. Hearsay most likely. Definitely suspicious. I could walk into a bar tell everyone I killed someone and boast about it. I may become a suspect or person of interest to the police, but they're gonna have an awfully hard time pinning me with murder based on purely bar talk. Now if the police have bodies or weapons etc. then this is a different story. OTOH who knows how rigorous the Brazilian court system is...
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoNo idea what Brazilian law is regarding hearsay or even if they have a rule disallowing it, but at least in the US, this instance of hearsay would be allowed as evidence in court under the "statement against interest" exception to the hearsay rule.
- dogruck 9y agoAh, seems like an open and shut case. Some drunk braggarts combined with some loose talk around town. I'm convinced!
- pmarreck 9y agoThey also said that they had to either kill or be killed. Which you conveniently omitted. And given everything I've read about many of these tribes, they will not hesitate to fire arrows at you even if you're a futuristic helicopter hovering 300 feet above them simply observing