9 ms·

I think the Bill Cosby allegations, accusations and trial are somewhat relevant to this contextually. Putting aside (if you can) what Cosby was accused of, the

I think the Bill Cosby allegations, accusations and trial are somewhat relevant to this contextually. Putting aside (if you can) what Cosby was accused of, the trial by media and widespread publicity of accuser allegations and claims over a multi year, two trial period was a disaster for legal credibility IMO. "“The ability to find evidence that can support a defense 20 years later — it’s an almost insurmountable task,” said Nina J. Ginsberg, a criminal defense lawyer in Virginia who has handled a number of sexual assault cases. “Having these really long statutes of limitations where it makes it virtually impossible to disprove what the victim is saying is grossly unfair,” she added. “Just from the defense attorney’s perspective, it’s disabling.” http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-gloria-allred-famous-cases-20151113-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-gloria-allred-... With historical sexual allegations a powerful weapon in politics, business and for financial gain, the accused are increasingly defenseless and accused is the new guilty. I'm not defending 'shitty men' or Bill Cosby here, I'm saying the legal system is a mess and that careers and credibility are destroyed during the witch hunt whether found guilty or not. Whatever happened to 'innocent until proved guilty' and the accused's rights to privacy?

harlanji 8y ago
My life has been destroyed by a baseless corporate accusation of misconduct. I used the bitch-word toward a woman, and the story morphed into me flying off into a drunken rage while I was out of the office for a funeral. The story stuck and I'm now homeless. By the time I went to legal counsel realizing the extent of the damages, ironically, the statute of limitations of one year had already closed. And on the street I remain, until I can gain employment and credibility again. I'd actually welcome an assault case or anything to shed light onto the situation... because I'm effectively being treated as guilty of assault.
- komali2 8y ago
  I'm sorry you're homeless, that sucks. Can you help me better understand what happened here, though? Because it sounds like you called a coworker a bitch and was fired over it, and now can't get a recommendation from that job... In which case, can you understand why people might have a hard time sympathizing with your situation? Seems the results would be the same whether or not the story morphed.
  - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
    Agreed. The morphing sounds unfortunate but immaterial here. Calling a coworker a bitch should absolutely be grounds for dismissal in my opinion.
    - mpweiher 8y ago
      I think you mis-spelled "grounds for a warning".
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - prepend 8y ago
      That’s interesting as a blanket rule. Using the word should per the definition in rfc2119 [0] means that the recommendation is to dismiss. Not sure if you mean it this way. To me, personal insults are definitely not preferred, but it seems harsh to set a ground rule for dismissal if they are used. Is it just the word “bitch” or would “asshole” or “dickhead” or any pejorative also count? I think there are some categories that fall into this and if a racial slur is used then, to me, that falls into should territory. [0] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt
      - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
        This is just my opinion, and I don’t set employment policy anywhere. But at my place of work (a Google/Alphabet company), on my team, nobody behaves that antagonistically to anyone else as far as I know. Calling someone a bitch or a dick is pretty harsh compared to how we handle disagreements. That kind of behavior seems below our expectations in my opinion. I am, however, just an engineer and contractor, not a manager or policy maker.
    - Aloha 8y ago
      Why should calling a co-worker a name be grounds for dismissal? grounds for a warning, or other punishment perhaps, but not ground for immediate dismissal.
- Rainymood 8y ago
  Same here. I once got laid off when I was really young (like 16) from a shelf stocking job because well ... honestly I was not doing my job and was spending more time socialising, so yeah. Anyway, I was escorted out and said goodbye to everyone (I loved my co-workers). Years later someone comes up to me and says "wow are you the guy that went completely nuts when he got fired and tore the store up?!" and this one little story of me just saying goodbye to everyone and walking through the store got blown up into this monstrosity through word-of-mouth. I was really surprised.
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
  Just curious. Where does a homeless and jobless person browse HN from?
  - sleazebreeze 8y ago
    Public library is always an option.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    "homeless" covers a wide range of situations including "living on the street", "living in a vehicle", and "sofa surfing". People already own things when they become homeless, so a smartphone would only cost for the data,and some places have free wifi. Managing to keep in touch with a source of possibly useful information during a time of hardship is resourceful.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  No offense but if your life is destoryed by losing one job I'm going to guess you had other problems in your life?
  - DanBC 8y ago
    This is needlessly unkind.
- clubm8 8y ago
  >My life has been destroyed by a baseless corporate accusation of misconduct. I used the bitch-word toward a woman Calling your coworker a bitch is most certainly a fireable offense. Sorry to hear you haven't found work since. Maybe taking ownership of your mistake and showing remorse will impress potential future employers.
komali2 8y ago
I don't think anything happened to innocent until proven guilty. Bill Cosby for example, was guilty, which by your argument justifies the media circus. I'm not surprised a defense attorney had a hard time defending a rapist. As a mild media observer, the last few false accusations that cropped up seemed to be summarily dismissed, with a total drop of credibility for the accusers. Remember "Hugh Mungus?" Or Aziz Ansari's awkward date where he recommended a wine choice? Last I checked Aziz still has a career, and Hugh turned out fine. Basically, I disagree with the premise that people's lives are being ruined by false accusations. Considering that they're so rare already, and that the media-participant world moves on quickly when an accusation turns out to be false (or even "punishes" the false accuser), the current (much repeated by right wing media) narrative of "innocent until proven guilty is dead" and "#metoo is destroying honest men's families" is a false narrative. Edit: I'm very happy to have a majority disagree with me, but I could learn a lot more about why my take is unpopular if someone could spare a few sentences as to why they disagree, alongside their downvote.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  I haven’t voted on your comment. Here’s something your comment made me think: I want us to shame convicted criminals. Shaming accused criminals is dangerous and makes finding real convictions hard. Maybe so far every major public accusation was correct. But would you ever put it past some crooked billionaire to fund a false accusation campaign against someone? To use a few political characters as an example, what if the Koch brothers led a smear campaign like this against the next Bernie Sanders? Should we behave as if accusations are generally true, and begin treating the accused as guilty immediately? Or should we recognize that while rape and other assaults do happen often and are terrible crimes, the court of public opinion could still be intentionally manipulated by bad actors, and such a manipulation represents a powerful tool for smearing good people? This is what I see being discussed in these comments. The risk that we create when we automatically believe all accusations. I totally get the history of dismissal men have had towards women that has led to a shameful lack of conviction for sex crimes. And so I understand why defaulting to believing the women is a good idea. And between some random public citizens, or comedians etc, I’m less worried about false accusations. But once big party politics get involved, it seems way easier for me to imagine a false accusation being used as a tool of public manipulation. And that’s something I think we should be mindful of. What do you think of that?
rdiddly 8y ago
...and due process...
geofft 8y ago
I thought the disaster for legal credibility in the Cosby case was that it took so long for the legal system to identify and stop a rapist, even as the weight of evidence mounted against him?
- corndoge 8y ago
  This seems to be a red herring because, while not a worthless statement in and of itself, it is largely irrelevant to the parent's comment
mjcl 8y ago
It is a mess, but I hope you’re not saying that this is a new or recent phenomenon. Innocence in a legal sense has always been far removed from public opinion. The existence of things like the police blotter in local newspapers demonstrates that pretty well. I’m not opining on the righteousness of it, but it seems like a whole lot of people ‘got religion’ w/r/t fairness once it started impacting rich/privileged people.
- cookiecaper 8y ago
  Rich and privileged people have always been the main people concerned about the risk of having their reputation tarnished in a widespread way, if for no other reason than rich and privileged and the existence of a widespread reputation to tarnish ordinarily co-exist, so it seems like a weird thing to just recently notice. The difference is that technology has taken infamy to a global scale, making available a global reserve of vicious, unchecked sadism to those who can figure out how to point the cannon at their desired target. The only thing left to do is to fight over control of the cannon.
  - mjcl 8y ago
    Another way to look at it is that privileged people have had the ability to ruin the lives of the less privileged for a long time (see Emmett Till) and global communications has just democratized the process. It’s not good and I truthfully don’t know how we fix this, but I hope we fix the whole problem and not just the symptom of powerful people being convicted in the court of public opinion.
Avshalom 8y ago
>>With historical sexual allegations a powerful weapon in politics, business and for financial gain but they aren't.
- olivermarks 8y ago
  @Avshalom monika lewinsky etc etc
kennywinker 8y ago
> With historical sexual allegations a powerful weapon in politics, business and for financial gain, the accused are increasingly defenseless and accused is the new guilty. If three accusations are not powerful enough to stop someone from getting a seat on the supreme court, any claim that we're giving too much power to accusers can't be taken seriously.
- lykr0n 8y ago
  I think that's a factor when they came out. If they came out 2 months ago, I don't think he'd have gotten as far as he did.
  - omegaworks 8y ago
    Kavanaugh was prepared to do damage control from the get-go[1]. Christine Ford presented her allegation while he was on the short-list[2], in hopes that it would be quietly handled and another candidate could have been chosen. The timing wasn't the issue. 1. https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1046923936011825152 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1046923936011825152 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-hearing-transcript/?utm_term=.f001c3a009d1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/k...
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Kavanaugh is awful and should have been disqualified for other reasons, but he wasn't the one sitting on Ford's accusations. Feinstein's story is that the accusation was in the form of "this is for your information only and I do not consent to publicity", which was pretty much useless for a minority committee member.
      - omegaworks 8y ago
        Whether it was Feinstein, Grassley, Trump or John Roberts, who is to blame doesn't matter given the context of "historical power of allegations" which is the topic at hand. The fact remains: Kavanaugh has been elevated to a position of supreme power for the remainder of his lifetime, despite credible allegations of sexual assault and perjury. The system failed Christine Ford.
gimmeThaBeet 8y ago
What I've found interesting in all this, and I don't really intend it as pessimism, is that people think 'innocent until proven guilty' is a common thing, when the scope seems quite limited. It mostly only applies in criminal court, it doesn't really exist in that form in civil court, it certainly doesn't exist in peoples' minds watching the news. I'm not discounting the correctness of the idea, but in a legal realism sense, is presumption of innocence a natural idea? What is the expectation it'll happen in an informal environment? It's similar free speech when people figure out it doesn't protect your job. Free speech protecting you in a public sphere seems to only be effective if your life is mostly defined in the public sphere. The more your life is defined in a private sphere, I'd argue the less those rights really exist in a practical sense.
- hirundo 8y ago
  > is presumption of innocence a natural idea? What is the expectation it'll happen in an informal environment? I would expect it to evolve in any group where false accusations are cheap to make and costly to bear, whether the context is formal or informal.
- nostromo 8y ago
  Can we retire this trite remark about free speech only applying to government restriction? It’s simply not true. It’s true only when speaking of the First Amendment specifically — but the concept and ideal of free speech and expression is much larger than the First Amendment. It also has a much longer history, dating back to Ancient Greece.
  - oconnor663 8y ago
    True, but at the same time the conventional value of free speech has a lot more exceptions than the Constitutional version. If someone's calling you out for being a jerk, and your best defense is "hey our culture usually values letting people disagree," everyone's probably going to think you're a jerk.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
    The concept of free speech has a long history, sure. Just as long is the history of that concept being totally divorced from the types of things you can actually get away with saying in any given situation. You can basically think of the freedom of speech as guaranteed by the first amendment as an approximate upper bound on pragmatic free speech. It is not (at least in the minds of most people) an optimum that we should be striving for in all contexts. It's just the level where we don't think anyone should be locked up or fined for exercising.
Eric_WVGG 8y ago
Be careful of your use of the term “which hunt.” It explicitly refers to ”made-up allegations.” If it happened, it’s not a witch hunt.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  I tried to watch this closely. I'm aware that some parts where planned carefully to increase the chances of him getting approved. But still there are massive holes in the attacks against him. So big that even if is Trumps favourite candidate (and therefore I have reason to dislike him) it still ends up with nothing except what seems to be baseless accusations. It cannot be like this, that someone can come out of nowhere 30 years later without a single piece of evidence - except a testimony from a peeson who is clearly trying to hurt him - and we are supposed to believe it. And as it turns out they cannot prove the thing they originally accused him for - then immediately they try to "prove" he is a witch in two other ways: - he drank too much back in the days - he was angry when he defended himself I say witch hunt is a good word. He was declared a witch by certain people and from there on the only thing that mattered was to pin him for something.
Aloha 8y ago
Social Media, largely - but this isn't new - look at the case of Fatty Arbuckle. People now get tried in the court of public opinion as a function of virtue signaling - "Person X did currently unpopular thing Y, I must show that I do not support the activity of Y, by expressing my displeasure of person X" and on, and on, and on, also people are not willing to admit that in some of these cases, the people are mistaken, confused about what happened or intentions, or about the identity of people involved. It's not to say that nothing happened, but it may not line up with the reality of the situation claimed. Generally, I use the following rule: 1 accusation without corresponding other evidence? I'm willing to discount, depending on the situation. 2-3 accusations without corresponding other evidence? Something may have happened here, and a deeper investigation should happen. 4+ accusations without corresponding other evidence? Person might be guilty of what they are accused of, we should really investigate this so the justice system can do its thing.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jarfil 8y ago
  10+ accusations without evidence? Sounds like a witch hunt. I mean, how likely is it that 10+ people all had no chance to collect any evidence?
  - AlexandrB 8y ago
    > I mean, how likely is it that 10+ people all had no chance to collect any evidence? In cases of sexual assault or rape? Very high. Police departments aren't too careful with the relevant physical evidence[1] and the crime is extremely humiliating and traumatic for the victim - especially in previous decades where "she was asking for it" was a valid defence for sexual assault. [1] https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Police-apologize-for-lost-rape-kits-12466366.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Police-apologize-for...
  - Aloha 8y ago
    In sexual assaults it often is she said, he said - and that's just kind of the brass tacks of it - what I don't like is that we're seeing lives ruined, and careers destroyed over single accusations, unproven ones even - that are taken to the court of public opinion instead of a court of justice.
Buldak 8y ago
It's not clear to me what you find damning about the Cosby case. Are you suggesting that he should have been acquitted or found innocent, but was not due to overwhelming public opinion? The quite general remarks by Ginsberg that you cite here don't illuminate much.
watwut 8y ago
I was warned a out certain men and groups in the past and I am thankful to people who warned me. In one case, confirmed to have dodged bullet. And I would extend the courtesy about a handsy man. It might just be a simple thing about who to avoid to be alone with or whose department I don't want to be in. Which what the list was originally. You have no alternative how to keep yourself safe - except maybe don't trust any man ever which is even more unfair and would cost me too much.
mwilliaams 8y ago
Innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, solves all the problems here. The testimony of one witness should not be enough to convict someone. It may be enough to open an investigation, but not to convict someone. And if someone isn’t proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, they should be treated as innocent. These two principles are the foundation of our justice system. If only people would actually follow what is already written into law…
- icebraining 8y ago
  The judicial system only applies that principle when it's considering locking up someone. When dealing with a grievance between two persons, it's only "preponderance of evidence", meaning "more likely than not".
- danso 8y ago
  "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is not the burden of proof for civil lawsuits.
mcphage 8y ago
> Whatever happened to 'innocent until proved guilty' If Person A accuses Person B of something, "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't really get you anywhere. If you say Person B is innocent, that means you're saying Person A is guilty—of bearing false witness.
radiantswirl 8y ago
Technology happened bro, it's just that no one predicted that technology would bring MOB RULE!

harlanji 8y ago

My life has been destroyed by a baseless corporate accusation of misconduct. I used the bitch-word toward a woman, and the story morphed into me flying off into a drunken rage while I was out of the office for a funeral. The story stuck and I'm now homeless. By the time I went to legal counsel realizing the extent of the damages, ironically, the statute of limitations of one year had already closed. And on the street I remain, until I can gain employment and credibility again. I'd actually welcome an assault case or anything to shed light onto the situation... because I'm effectively being treated as guilty of assault.

komali2 8y ago
I'm sorry you're homeless, that sucks. Can you help me better understand what happened here, though? Because it sounds like you called a coworker a bitch and was fired over it, and now can't get a recommendation from that job... In which case, can you understand why people might have a hard time sympathizing with your situation? Seems the results would be the same whether or not the story morphed.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  Agreed. The morphing sounds unfortunate but immaterial here. Calling a coworker a bitch should absolutely be grounds for dismissal in my opinion.
  - mpweiher 8y ago
    I think you mis-spelled "grounds for a warning".
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - prepend 8y ago
    That’s interesting as a blanket rule. Using the word should per the definition in rfc2119 [0] means that the recommendation is to dismiss. Not sure if you mean it this way. To me, personal insults are definitely not preferred, but it seems harsh to set a ground rule for dismissal if they are used. Is it just the word “bitch” or would “asshole” or “dickhead” or any pejorative also count? I think there are some categories that fall into this and if a racial slur is used then, to me, that falls into should territory. [0] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt
    - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
      This is just my opinion, and I don’t set employment policy anywhere. But at my place of work (a Google/Alphabet company), on my team, nobody behaves that antagonistically to anyone else as far as I know. Calling someone a bitch or a dick is pretty harsh compared to how we handle disagreements. That kind of behavior seems below our expectations in my opinion. I am, however, just an engineer and contractor, not a manager or policy maker.
  - Aloha 8y ago
    Why should calling a co-worker a name be grounds for dismissal? grounds for a warning, or other punishment perhaps, but not ground for immediate dismissal.
Rainymood 8y ago
Same here. I once got laid off when I was really young (like 16) from a shelf stocking job because well ... honestly I was not doing my job and was spending more time socialising, so yeah. Anyway, I was escorted out and said goodbye to everyone (I loved my co-workers). Years later someone comes up to me and says "wow are you the guy that went completely nuts when he got fired and tore the store up?!" and this one little story of me just saying goodbye to everyone and walking through the store got blown up into this monstrosity through word-of-mouth. I was really surprised.
BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
Just curious. Where does a homeless and jobless person browse HN from?
- sleazebreeze 8y ago
  Public library is always an option.
- DanBC 8y ago
  "homeless" covers a wide range of situations including "living on the street", "living in a vehicle", and "sofa surfing". People already own things when they become homeless, so a smartphone would only cost for the data,and some places have free wifi. Managing to keep in touch with a source of possibly useful information during a time of hardship is resourceful.
oh_sigh 8y ago
No offense but if your life is destoryed by losing one job I'm going to guess you had other problems in your life?
- DanBC 8y ago
  This is needlessly unkind.
clubm8 8y ago
>My life has been destroyed by a baseless corporate accusation of misconduct. I used the bitch-word toward a woman Calling your coworker a bitch is most certainly a fireable offense. Sorry to hear you haven't found work since. Maybe taking ownership of your mistake and showing remorse will impress potential future employers.

komali2 8y ago

I don't think anything happened to innocent until proven guilty. Bill Cosby for example, was guilty, which by your argument justifies the media circus. I'm not surprised a defense attorney had a hard time defending a rapist. As a mild media observer, the last few false accusations that cropped up seemed to be summarily dismissed, with a total drop of credibility for the accusers. Remember "Hugh Mungus?" Or Aziz Ansari's awkward date where he recommended a wine choice? Last I checked Aziz still has a career, and Hugh turned out fine. Basically, I disagree with the premise that people's lives are being ruined by false accusations. Considering that they're so rare already, and that the media-participant world moves on quickly when an accusation turns out to be false (or even "punishes" the false accuser), the current (much repeated by right wing media) narrative of "innocent until proven guilty is dead" and "#metoo is destroying honest men's families" is a false narrative. Edit: I'm very happy to have a majority disagree with me, but I could learn a lot more about why my take is unpopular if someone could spare a few sentences as to why they disagree, alongside their downvote.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
I haven’t voted on your comment. Here’s something your comment made me think: I want us to shame convicted criminals. Shaming accused criminals is dangerous and makes finding real convictions hard. Maybe so far every major public accusation was correct. But would you ever put it past some crooked billionaire to fund a false accusation campaign against someone? To use a few political characters as an example, what if the Koch brothers led a smear campaign like this against the next Bernie Sanders? Should we behave as if accusations are generally true, and begin treating the accused as guilty immediately? Or should we recognize that while rape and other assaults do happen often and are terrible crimes, the court of public opinion could still be intentionally manipulated by bad actors, and such a manipulation represents a powerful tool for smearing good people? This is what I see being discussed in these comments. The risk that we create when we automatically believe all accusations. I totally get the history of dismissal men have had towards women that has led to a shameful lack of conviction for sex crimes. And so I understand why defaulting to believing the women is a good idea. And between some random public citizens, or comedians etc, I’m less worried about false accusations. But once big party politics get involved, it seems way easier for me to imagine a false accusation being used as a tool of public manipulation. And that’s something I think we should be mindful of. What do you think of that?

rdiddly 8y ago

...and due process...

geofft 8y ago

I thought the disaster for legal credibility in the Cosby case was that it took so long for the legal system to identify and stop a rapist, even as the weight of evidence mounted against him?

corndoge 8y ago
This seems to be a red herring because, while not a worthless statement in and of itself, it is largely irrelevant to the parent's comment

mjcl 8y ago

It is a mess, but I hope you’re not saying that this is a new or recent phenomenon. Innocence in a legal sense has always been far removed from public opinion. The existence of things like the police blotter in local newspapers demonstrates that pretty well. I’m not opining on the righteousness of it, but it seems like a whole lot of people ‘got religion’ w/r/t fairness once it started impacting rich/privileged people.

cookiecaper 8y ago
Rich and privileged people have always been the main people concerned about the risk of having their reputation tarnished in a widespread way, if for no other reason than rich and privileged and the existence of a widespread reputation to tarnish ordinarily co-exist, so it seems like a weird thing to just recently notice. The difference is that technology has taken infamy to a global scale, making available a global reserve of vicious, unchecked sadism to those who can figure out how to point the cannon at their desired target. The only thing left to do is to fight over control of the cannon.
- mjcl 8y ago
  Another way to look at it is that privileged people have had the ability to ruin the lives of the less privileged for a long time (see Emmett Till) and global communications has just democratized the process. It’s not good and I truthfully don’t know how we fix this, but I hope we fix the whole problem and not just the symptom of powerful people being convicted in the court of public opinion.

Avshalom 8y ago

>>With historical sexual allegations a powerful weapon in politics, business and for financial gain but they aren't.

olivermarks 8y ago
@Avshalom monika lewinsky etc etc

kennywinker 8y ago

> With historical sexual allegations a powerful weapon in politics, business and for financial gain, the accused are increasingly defenseless and accused is the new guilty. If three accusations are not powerful enough to stop someone from getting a seat on the supreme court, any claim that we're giving too much power to accusers can't be taken seriously.

lykr0n 8y ago
I think that's a factor when they came out. If they came out 2 months ago, I don't think he'd have gotten as far as he did.
- omegaworks 8y ago
  Kavanaugh was prepared to do damage control from the get-go[1]. Christine Ford presented her allegation while he was on the short-list[2], in hopes that it would be quietly handled and another candidate could have been chosen. The timing wasn't the issue. 1. https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1046923936011825152 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1046923936011825152 2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-hearing-transcript/?utm_term=.f001c3a009d1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/k...
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Kavanaugh is awful and should have been disqualified for other reasons, but he wasn't the one sitting on Ford's accusations. Feinstein's story is that the accusation was in the form of "this is for your information only and I do not consent to publicity", which was pretty much useless for a minority committee member.
    - omegaworks 8y ago
      Whether it was Feinstein, Grassley, Trump or John Roberts, who is to blame doesn't matter given the context of "historical power of allegations" which is the topic at hand. The fact remains: Kavanaugh has been elevated to a position of supreme power for the remainder of his lifetime, despite credible allegations of sexual assault and perjury. The system failed Christine Ford.

gimmeThaBeet 8y ago

What I've found interesting in all this, and I don't really intend it as pessimism, is that people think 'innocent until proven guilty' is a common thing, when the scope seems quite limited. It mostly only applies in criminal court, it doesn't really exist in that form in civil court, it certainly doesn't exist in peoples' minds watching the news. I'm not discounting the correctness of the idea, but in a legal realism sense, is presumption of innocence a natural idea? What is the expectation it'll happen in an informal environment? It's similar free speech when people figure out it doesn't protect your job. Free speech protecting you in a public sphere seems to only be effective if your life is mostly defined in the public sphere. The more your life is defined in a private sphere, I'd argue the less those rights really exist in a practical sense.

hirundo 8y ago
> is presumption of innocence a natural idea? What is the expectation it'll happen in an informal environment? I would expect it to evolve in any group where false accusations are cheap to make and costly to bear, whether the context is formal or informal.
nostromo 8y ago
Can we retire this trite remark about free speech only applying to government restriction? It’s simply not true. It’s true only when speaking of the First Amendment specifically — but the concept and ideal of free speech and expression is much larger than the First Amendment. It also has a much longer history, dating back to Ancient Greece.
- oconnor663 8y ago
  True, but at the same time the conventional value of free speech has a lot more exceptions than the Constitutional version. If someone's calling you out for being a jerk, and your best defense is "hey our culture usually values letting people disagree," everyone's probably going to think you're a jerk.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  The concept of free speech has a long history, sure. Just as long is the history of that concept being totally divorced from the types of things you can actually get away with saying in any given situation. You can basically think of the freedom of speech as guaranteed by the first amendment as an approximate upper bound on pragmatic free speech. It is not (at least in the minds of most people) an optimum that we should be striving for in all contexts. It's just the level where we don't think anyone should be locked up or fined for exercising.

Eric_WVGG 8y ago

Be careful of your use of the term “which hunt.” It explicitly refers to ”made-up allegations.” If it happened, it’s not a witch hunt.

reitanqild 8y ago
I tried to watch this closely. I'm aware that some parts where planned carefully to increase the chances of him getting approved. But still there are massive holes in the attacks against him. So big that even if is Trumps favourite candidate (and therefore I have reason to dislike him) it still ends up with nothing except what seems to be baseless accusations. It cannot be like this, that someone can come out of nowhere 30 years later without a single piece of evidence - except a testimony from a peeson who is clearly trying to hurt him - and we are supposed to believe it. And as it turns out they cannot prove the thing they originally accused him for - then immediately they try to "prove" he is a witch in two other ways: - he drank too much back in the days - he was angry when he defended himself I say witch hunt is a good word. He was declared a witch by certain people and from there on the only thing that mattered was to pin him for something.

Aloha 8y ago

Social Media, largely - but this isn't new - look at the case of Fatty Arbuckle. People now get tried in the court of public opinion as a function of virtue signaling - "Person X did currently unpopular thing Y, I must show that I do not support the activity of Y, by expressing my displeasure of person X" and on, and on, and on, also people are not willing to admit that in some of these cases, the people are mistaken, confused about what happened or intentions, or about the identity of people involved. It's not to say that nothing happened, but it may not line up with the reality of the situation claimed. Generally, I use the following rule: 1 accusation without corresponding other evidence? I'm willing to discount, depending on the situation. 2-3 accusations without corresponding other evidence? Something may have happened here, and a deeper investigation should happen. 4+ accusations without corresponding other evidence? Person might be guilty of what they are accused of, we should really investigate this so the justice system can do its thing.

deleted 8y ago
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jarfil 8y ago
10+ accusations without evidence? Sounds like a witch hunt. I mean, how likely is it that 10+ people all had no chance to collect any evidence?
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  > I mean, how likely is it that 10+ people all had no chance to collect any evidence? In cases of sexual assault or rape? Very high. Police departments aren't too careful with the relevant physical evidence[1] and the crime is extremely humiliating and traumatic for the victim - especially in previous decades where "she was asking for it" was a valid defence for sexual assault. [1] https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Police-apologize-for-lost-rape-kits-12466366.php https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Police-apologize-for...
- Aloha 8y ago
  In sexual assaults it often is she said, he said - and that's just kind of the brass tacks of it - what I don't like is that we're seeing lives ruined, and careers destroyed over single accusations, unproven ones even - that are taken to the court of public opinion instead of a court of justice.

Buldak 8y ago

It's not clear to me what you find damning about the Cosby case. Are you suggesting that he should have been acquitted or found innocent, but was not due to overwhelming public opinion? The quite general remarks by Ginsberg that you cite here don't illuminate much.

watwut 8y ago

I was warned a out certain men and groups in the past and I am thankful to people who warned me. In one case, confirmed to have dodged bullet. And I would extend the courtesy about a handsy man. It might just be a simple thing about who to avoid to be alone with or whose department I don't want to be in. Which what the list was originally. You have no alternative how to keep yourself safe - except maybe don't trust any man ever which is even more unfair and would cost me too much.

mwilliaams 8y ago

Innocent until proven guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, solves all the problems here. The testimony of one witness should not be enough to convict someone. It may be enough to open an investigation, but not to convict someone. And if someone isn’t proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, they should be treated as innocent. These two principles are the foundation of our justice system. If only people would actually follow what is already written into law…

icebraining 8y ago
The judicial system only applies that principle when it's considering locking up someone. When dealing with a grievance between two persons, it's only "preponderance of evidence", meaning "more likely than not".
danso 8y ago
"Beyond a reasonable doubt" is not the burden of proof for civil lawsuits.

mcphage 8y ago

> Whatever happened to 'innocent until proved guilty' If Person A accuses Person B of something, "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't really get you anywhere. If you say Person B is innocent, that means you're saying Person A is guilty—of bearing false witness.

radiantswirl 8y ago

Technology happened bro, it's just that no one predicted that technology would bring MOB RULE!