In the US, it's "innocent until proven guilty".
Media is so quick to assume the person is guilty just because of an allegation.
You'd hope that before someone is arrested, the prosecutor has ample evidence to prove guilt.
I don't understand your point.
These individuals have not been proven guilty yet. Why are you editorializing their presumed guilt in this matter.
Note: I have no affiliation with these individuals nor case.
But you don't have to keep going for drinks with a person who's just been arrested and let out on bail, you can make up your own opinion as you feel. You can say bad things about him before the judge does, you can deny them business opportunities, your kids don't have to play with his kids.
yes, they're legally presumed innocent but they have a LOT of 'splaining to do.
If someone is on video shooting someone, it is a bit silly to say "Why are you editorializing their presumed guilt in this matter."
Yup, I don’t understand how people is not used yet to public trials at social networks
I've been indicted twice and both times the grand jury transcripts were just lies.
In fact, I got someone released after 16 months in jail on a burglary charge because their grand jury was lies. The story the cop told was a complete fabrication.
1. https://www.bhlawfirm.com/blog/2021/05/the-federal-convictio....
Of course innocent until proven guilty applies but the justice department knows that and still brought charges. At the very least, they believe they've proven beyond a reasonable doubt his guilt.
High profile cases with public pressure change the equation a bit and can cause charges to be brought on people who normally would not. I suspect this is a way to pass the buck to the courts when the person eventually gets off due to lack of evidence.
“The arrests today show that we will take a firm stand against those who allegedly try to use virtual currencies for criminal purposes.” - Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. [My emphasis.]
There's no reason for the Justice Dept. not to take a firm stand against those who try to use virtual currencies for criminal purposes, or say that they are doing so - and, in fact, that would be rather better than taking a firm stand against those who have merely been accused of doing so. I guess that 'allegedly' was inserted here in order to forestall a claim that this statement deprived the defendants in this case of due process, if or when it comes to trial.
This article says 97%: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/prisons-are-packed-bec...
Why are people so eager to confess their guilt instead of challenging the government to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of a unanimous jury?
The answer is simple and stark: They’re being coerced.
I was replying to a claim that a high conviction rate somehow suggests we should dispense with the idea that, as a society, we should not presume guilt.
grumple, who I replied to, seemed to me to be suggesting that because the federal government has a high conviction rate, we should assume the accused are guilty.
I'm suggesting that because there is compelling evidence that many guilty verdicts are obtained through coercion, we should not make that assumption.
You can obviously do that, but it makes little sense to do so when the system has been built around not taking what the prosecution says at face value or as a source of truth. The job of the prosecution is not to show the facts, it's to prosecute. Yes you don't have to go by the standards of the judicial system & presume innocence here, but why then use the prosecution's case when it only makes sense in the context of how our judicial system works?
Most people take it, and now they have a record. Any future fuck ups (guilty or not) and you're looking at real jail time.
Unless you already knew the people involved or we have some third party sources, we are basically just believing the side that only has 1 goal; showing how guilty the people they prosecute are. How could that mean anything else but assuming guilt?
(And honestly I think that personal feelings towards a person are very often good enough to make a personal judgment on guilt, but we don't even have that here! I'd bet most of us never heard of them before today)
You'd be crazy not to take the deal, even if you're innocent. Thus, the conviction rate doesn't actually tell us much about how strong the federal cases actually are.
I haven't mentioned either the prosecution or the defense.
The defense makes noises too, and you are welcome to make your own mix of whatever you like.
But to repeat the point, you are under no obligation, it is the official system that is.
What is wrong is for media organizations (which can be as small as independent reporters) to break expected traditions w/o acknowledging it. It suggests that this case is different (and again, it might be different) implicitly, which isn't ethical. You should either work within the prevailing assumptions of the system, or explicitly defy them in a principled maner.
I don't think this is in practice true, as a matter of fact rather than an ideal. People don't, in general, behave the same with other people who are currently being prosecuted for a crime.
This certainly doesn't mean (most) people support vigilantism or witch hunts, or even that you assume guilt. However it seems clear the vast majority of people are fine with the idea that you might be "careful" with someone who is suspected of a crime, especially one being actively prosecuted. To the degree that many will claim they have a right to know this is happening, i.e. they will argue that news should be carried on this (although perhaps no editorializing). This absolutely is not the same as presumption of innocence.
Sometimes this is very unfair, obviously. But "the social contract" as it is practised seems to be pretty ok with that.
https://twitter.com/BillSPACman/status/1491131214014869505
Edit: whoops. That video is fake. It's from
https://www.tiktok.com/@realrazzlekhan/video/690851478968159...
The question is where do you draw the line as an individual.
People can disagree even if you're found innocent at trial... just look at OJ's case. The government isn't going to prosecute him again, but "OJ did it" is gonna dog him for the rest of his life.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Regardless of whether you "were not directly harmed" I don't see why someone should or shouldn't “say bad things about them."
Why shouldn't I express my opinion? Or are we in "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" territory?
I may be misunderstanding your point. If so, please do correct me. If not, I don't see why I (or anyone else) shouldn't express their opinion WRT anything.
What value that opinion may have can certainly be debated, but why should someone not express their opinion?
It's a bit of a nitpick, but the Justice Department (DoJ) hasn't proven anything.
The defendants in question have been charged (and arrested?), but no trial (or plea bargain) has been held. As such, presumably the DoJ has what they believe is sufficient evidence to convict the defendants on the charges brought against them.
However, until a trial (or a plea agreement) is concluded, the DoJ hasn't "proven" anything. Rather, they brought charges against some folks. That's not "proven beyond a reasonable doubt," that's making accusations and bringing the case into the court system.
What the DoJ believes (and/or believes it can prove) is not proof in and of itself.
No, if following general DoJ policy, they believe that the evidence is sufficient that they will be able to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, but that's not the same as them already having proven that.
> High profile cases with public pressure change the equation a bit and can cause charges to be brought on people who normally would not.
Usually, I think the opposite is the case: generally, the DoJ is more careful in high-profile cases, not more cavalier.
Actually, the 'allegedly' bit was inserted because the defendants in this case are alleged to have committed some criminal act(s). They have not been proven (whether via a trial or a plea agreement) to have done so.
The defendants may well be "guilty," or they may not. That's what the legal process (as flawed as it may be) is constituted to determine.
Forming an opinion at to whether or not anyone has committed an illegal act(s) is perfectly normal and reasonable. However, unless you're a member of a jury in a trial, your opinion generally won't affect the outcome.
All that said, defendants are "alleged" to have committed criminal act(s) until the case has been adjudicated, whether that be by trial or plea agreement.
N.B.: IANAL.
He's not someone I'd hire for anything, he's not someone I'd want my friends and family around. He's not someone I'd want attending any protest I was attending. He's not a good person, and he's a clear and present danger to society. These are the decisions that I, as an individual, am free to make because I'm not the government, and I don't have to abide by "innocent until proven guilty" for how I personally judge people.
Another good reason not to take a case to trial is potentially spending years in pre-trial detention, destroying your life -- losing your house, your kids, your job and anything else that requires your presence outside of a detention facility.
Which is why so many cases end up as plea bargains -- get sentenced to "time served" for a lesser offense and then try to pick up the pieces of your shattered life, or fight (assuming you have the money/resources to do so) and potentially never get the chance to pick up those pieces.
So yes, the system is quite coercive.
Let's say for the sake of argument that the DoJ (or state prosecutors) determine (by whatever means) that tptacek has committed criminal acts.
You are arrested, arraigned and bail is either denied or set high enough that you can't afford to pay.
How long could you sit in jail before you lose your job, your house, possibly your spouse and your kids and anything else important to you?
It could be years before a trial. And given that most folks can't afford an unexpected $500 expense, sitting in jail waiting to be tried isn't all that unusual.
Given those circumstances, how long could you sit in jail awaiting trial before your life is a complete shambles? Given the make up of folks here on HN, I'd expect that you may well be able to last longer than most.
High bail and pre-trial detention are absolutely used as cudgels that attempt to force even the innocent to accept plea agreements. Especially when indictments tend to include a lot of overcharging -- another cudgel to force a plea agreement.
Which is why I don't believe that plea agreements should be used at all. But that's a much larger discussion and beyond the scope of this comment.
I'm not sure Rittenhouse would have been charged at all and, based on how the trial went and how weak the evidence was, he should have, at best, been charged with something much more minor. But that's just one example.
I somewhat agree with you, they are more careful but I think they are more careful in their own process. To make sure their ducks are all in a row. But, when it comes to actually pressing charges or agreeing to plea deals, I think they are much more likely to overcharge or not negotiate so that the case is no longer on their desk and they can say "I did my part".
To use the Rittenhouse example, I think the public expectations of charges impacted the charges because the ones bringing charges are often elected officials (or appointed by them) so there's an incentive to not look at what can be proven with the evidence and instead charge with what the public thinks is "right". The incentive for an elected official is to appease the public with charges, convictions be damned because that's someone else's problem. That's how Rittenhouse's case played out too. Outside of conservative media, there was a lot of attention paid to the judge and the lawyers not being able to prove their case rather than floating the idea that maybe a lesser charge and a conviction was the right thing to do.
On the other hand, I think you saw the same course of events with the George Floyd case but with a different result. The investigation was drawn out and meticulous and charges were brought. That resulted in a conviction but the implication I'm making is that those charges would have been brought regardless of evidence because of the public nature of the case.
A fair point. And it's likely you're correct.
Although using the term 'prove' has specific legal meaning that many (myself included) folks would associate with the use of that term.
As I said, there's what you believe and what you can prove. Believing you can prove something may be well founded, but at least in the US nothing is actually "proven" until it has been adjudicated -- and even then contrary decisions (e.g., in an appeal) can "un-prove" stuff.
Perhaps a better phrasing would be "believe they can prove".
When a crime has been committed, it was not allegedly done by a person or persons unknown, it was actually done by whoever they were. One of the jobs of the justice department is to catch criminals, not alleged criminals.
In the Rittenhouse case, both prosecution and defence agree that Rittenhouse was a person who had a gun in his arms and fired it, resulting in death. The thing the prosecution needed to prove is that in doing so, he committed a crime. Prior to the trial, it was not necessary to express agnosticism about whether he had a firearm, fired it, or firing it resulted in anyone's death, even if there was some sense in which he was "innocent until proven guilty" of the conduct being criminal.
In this case, there is essentially no room for dispute that stealing $71 million, engaging in a vast money laundering conspiracy is in fact illegal. If these people actually had these accounts and actually used this money in this manner, there is no chance they will not be found guilty. The affidavit is not compatible with a set of the same basic facts leading to a different legal conclusion.
So the question is whether or not you think there's any possibility that the feds cavalierly misidentified the people in possession of these accounts. That seems pretty unlikely, given the affidavit suggests withdrawing small amounts of the stolen money to use Uber under their actual names, buy stuff on PlayStation under their actual names, etc; and that the private keys were taken from a cloud storage account actually belonging to the guy; and that the woman contacted various exchanges and talked about the actual company she actually owns, and the guy actually has a documented record of talking extensively about cryptocurrency including on this site using his actual name.
It is, of course, possible that the entire affidavit is a lie, made up whole cloth and all of this evidence is totally fake and the accused were minding their own business working on their gourmet cupcake business in Kansas City, and they don't understand anything about no crypto-whatsit. But I don't think that's a scenario that really requires much investigation, and it instead is a level of solipsism on par with "we can't actually know if gravity will cause us to fall" or "what if this is a simulation".
What I'm saying is that not all uncertainty is equal, either in kind or in probability, and so it makes more sense to be honest about that than equivocate across very dissimilar cases.
...of a case the US DoJ wasn't involved in prosecuting, because it was prosecuted by a completely separate sovereignty.
Not sure how that's an example of DoJ prosecutorial decision-making.
(And that's even before considering if comparison of actual events in one case to the speakers own stated opinion of how a counterfactual hypothetical would turn out, rather than contrasting real events, is really good evidence of a comparative behavior difference.)
That's all it means. Obviously judges are not supposed to come into a case assuming you are guilty, but you can say that about any type of case. The phrase certainly doesn't mean we have to pretend that you are perfectly innocent up until the point of verdict.
This is the part that was unproven and goes against sworn testimony in the court. Supposedly, the gun was stored at his friend's house in Kenosha. There was no evidence he took the gun across state lines.
So, you're proving the above poster's point because you're assuming he took the gun across state lines even though there was no evidence shown to show that was the case.
To boot, mounting a good defence against the state doesn't cheap. Competent defence attorneys charge quite some money.
In this instance however, it's safe to assume the accused can afford a good legal team/firm.
> 2OEH8eoCRo0:
> My experience was that people did not look at the evidence- they jumped to a conclusion.
You didn't look at the evidence, you jumped to a conclusion which is not based in fact, and broadcasted that you did this in your message. Thus proving 2OHEH8eoCRo0's point: people assume things about the case without looking at the facts.
> I didn't say I think he's guilty of transporting a weapon
You 100% did claim this when you said "the fact is that he took a gun across state lines".