Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
That you should treat people like they are not convicted is a totally different question. One name of the principle is "presumption of innocence". Note that the principle is not called "you are innocent".
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Something is apparently being lost in translation.
"Presumed innocent" means exactly *that*; in the eyes of the *law* you are *literally* innocent until convicted.
For that matter, as DNA testing has proved over and over, hundreds of convicted "wrongdoers" in jail are in fact totally innocent of the charges they were convicted of "violating".
Any legal system run by humans is going to be fallible and subject to abuses so those protections are necessary merely to *minimize* the impact of the unavoidable errors. Legal subtleties are likewise a necessity to deal with a world of shades of gray; we *need* distinctions between merely gaming the system (Tax minimization) and breaking existing laws (outright tax easion) as much as we need a distiction between accidental manslaughter (often out of sheer stupidity) and willful murder out of outright malice. This latter distinction is currently being played out in an american court right now in an unnecessary "drama" that will end in nothing good for anybody.