indogwetrust
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- Apr 28, 2012
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Man!
I'm with you - think those Law textbooks need updating - cos there seems to be more protection for the guilty than the innocent!
The thing is, the onus of 'beyond reasonable doubt' which is applied to criminal cases which is much more stringent as opposed to civil ('on the balance of probabilities') works both ways.
If you were innocent - and there's been heaps of cases where innocent people have been convicted - you would want that level of onus. You would want the prosecution to have to jump through hoops to prove their case, because what is at stake is your liberty which is highly valued in our democratic, liberal society.
I feel ill when I think about people in the U.S who have been wrongly convicted, despite this onus of proof, and were executed, then found after the fact, to be innocent. I can't imagine the hell they would have gone through, knowing they were innocent.
So whilst it sucks in the cases where it looks really obvious that someone is guilty, it sucks less so if you are innocent.