In the United States people accused of a crime are considered innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof falls on the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused has committed a crime. Clearly this is a benefit to a person accused of a crime. If the situation were reversed (as it is in many countries around the world) guilty until proven innocent, the benefit would be on the side of the government and not the individual. Martin L. in Period 1 came up with the following question: Is the system of due process a good one for all of society? In other words are you comfortable with the possibility of allowing a person who had committed a crime walk free, because of reasonable doubt, or is it harder to accept placing an innocent man behind bars to protect against reasonable doubt? Thoughts...
20 October 2010
Due Process...
In the United States people accused of a crime are considered innocent until proven guilty. The burden of proof falls on the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused has committed a crime. Clearly this is a benefit to a person accused of a crime. If the situation were reversed (as it is in many countries around the world) guilty until proven innocent, the benefit would be on the side of the government and not the individual. Martin L. in Period 1 came up with the following question: Is the system of due process a good one for all of society? In other words are you comfortable with the possibility of allowing a person who had committed a crime walk free, because of reasonable doubt, or is it harder to accept placing an innocent man behind bars to protect against reasonable doubt? Thoughts...
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9 comments:
Guilty until proven innocent is better for society. It is because if a murderer is innocent until proven guilty, he could escape without getting a punishment. If his lawyer can prove that in some way he is not related to the crime, and then he is innocent in the eyes of the law. But if he is guilty until proven innocent, it would be harder for the criminal to prove his innocence and he will get a punishment for what he did. Otherwise, it puts the normal people in the society in danger because he might go back and commit more crimes. But for an individual, innocent until proven guilty is better because it is harder for the prosecutor to prove him guilty.
I think that the way out society handles criminals (due process of law, or innocent until proven guilty) is a really irrational way to handle things. I think that it also gives criminals way to much "room" to compromise and make up excuses, or even hire the best lawyers to help them get out of it. Yes, guilty till proven innocent may put a lot of innocent people in jail but if it also captures more criminals than i think it is worth it. If you are really innocent you should be able to prove it with a true alibi and such facts. The way that the united states does it captures less criminals, and i think the society at a whole is safer when more criminals are locked up. Therefore i think that if your looking at a way to benefit the society we should change our due process to guilty until proven innocent.
I also think that guilty until proven innocent is better for society. I think that the due process of law allows to much leway room. A criminal in the United States knows that we go about our crime punishment like this. Because of this, there could be those extremely smart criminals who cover their tracks and allow little proof that they commited the crime they're being acused of. This makes it harder for the prosecution team to convince the judge or jury that the defendant is guilty. Lets say that the Judge or jury didn't claim the defendant guilty because there wasnt enough proof or evidence showing so, now we have a criminal walking around our streets. This is why i think that guilty until proven innocent is better for our society.
I disagree with both of you, because it is extremely hard to prove yourself as innocent if everybody already has a different opinion. I believe that you should be presumed as completley innocent when you have no other previous relevant convictions, then as you have 10+ I think that you could be convicted because of possibilities. Then more than 50 and I think you should be convicted anyway just because of all of the crimes that it is highly likely you have commited.
I think that there are also some exeptions to this system; for example rape, kiddy-fiddling snd murder. One previous conviction and I think that you should have the death penalty once it has been proven that you are guilty.
I agree with Timith and Hailey. I think that if you are guilty until proven innocent, society is safer and benefits more from it. The individual would benefit more if they were innocent until proven guilty, but society is safer with 'criminals' locked up, even if they are supposedly innocent because you can't be sure. This also makes more of a need for lawyers. Supposed 'criminals' would definitely need a lawyer since they would have to be proven innocent in order to not be locked up. Even if the individual did not commit the crime, at least society would feel better if a potential criminal was put away instead of interacting with us in our daily lives.
I think that it is better to have guilty until proven innocent. I think that it's better for both the individual and society. It benifits the individual because it gives everyone that commits a crime a fair opportunity to to prove that they're innocent, compared to just going to jail because everyone has the right to a fair trial. It also benifits the society because everyone's guilty until proven innocent so it puts the criminals in jail instead of having them roaming the streets and doing other crimes.
I believe that it should be guilty until proven innocent. This would benefit society and the individual. If your innocent then you know all the reasons why. People who are completely innocent should be able to prove so. Guilty people on the other hand, will not have such an easy time proving their innocence. In the U.S. people who are guilty have lawyers who know all the trick that will keep their clients out of jail. If everyone had to prove thier innocence then more criminals would be behind bars.
I agree with Timith believing that guilty until proven innocent is better for society because this way there is a much smaller chance of the individual who committed the crime to walk free. With the law as it is now "innocent until proven guilty" as long as you can convince one person that the accused is innocent then they are walking. Guilty until proven innocent is better for society because its much less likely that the individual will walk free.
I think guilty until proven innocent is an effective way to stop criminals in thier tracks. As hailey and kirsten said, yes, many innocent people would be blamed for crimes they didnt commit, but if they truly did not commit the crime, there should be enough evidence to prove thier innocence. This way the true criminals can be filtered out from those who conform to society to allow no lee-way for the criminals to avoid punishment by our judicial system.
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