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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

All criminal accusations, including true ones, should be treated as false until the accused is proven guilty.

This is a fundamental tenet of human rights in western, small-l liberal free societies.

The fact that this is controversial these days is literally insane to me.

The consequences of throwing this fundamental system out the window is that you get the sort of nonsense that happened with Assange, where he was literally never even charged yet completely and thoroughly discredited due to headlines containing the word "rape" when no such thing ever happened.

(If you have been misled to believe otherwise, I encourage you to read the direct statements of the women involved.)

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The real problem occurs long before a verdict is rendered in a court of law. Someone gets arrested for a misdemeanor, they spend a couple of nights in jail until bail can be arranged, in the meantime they got fired for missing work, the car they were driving was towed/impounded and will cost them hundreds of dollars to retrieve, they missed their rent payment and their landlord has begun eviction proceedings, etc. The fact that they are found not guilty when their trial happens a year later is irrelevant. Not to mention every future potential employer Googles their name and the first link that comes up is their arrest record. The "presumption of innocence" is meaningless when so much damage is done long before a trial even starts.

> All criminal accusations, including true ones, should be treated as false until the accused is proven guilty.

No, they need to be treated as unproven, a very critical difference.

Just to be clear, witness testimony, including testimony FROM THE VICTIM, is evidence of the crime. Just for some reason, in rape cases, we go all wonky with this principle.

Testimony is seen as wonky in all kinds of cases. The problem with testimony about rape, however, is that, in those cases, supporting evidence is rarer than usual and even when it exists, proving it was non-consensual at the time is even harder (especially when relationships or affairs are involved).

Yes, rape is more difficult to prove than a number of other crimes. That is no reason to jump to a default "assume the accusation is false".

The reason to default to that is because a principle of our legal system is that people are innocent until proven guilty. On top of that proving someone guilty requires going beyond reasonable doubt.

The principle is the defendant is innocent until proven guilty, NOT that the accuser is making a false accusation.

There is a reason the verdict is "not guilty" instead of "innocent". After a not guilty verdict the legal system still does not assume the accuser was making a false accusation.

> There is a reason the verdict is "not guilty" instead of "innocent".

Both verdicts exists, actually; the latter one is just far rarer (since it is both harder to prove and usually not what is argued about).

Yes, and almost always a either a case of mistaken identity or emerging malfeasance by either witnesses or prosecution.

Ironically, a provable case of false rape accusation might result in this verdict.

Depends. Are certain groups disproportionally more likely to benefit from said accusations?

Sorry, it needs to be said. It's easier to take one side of an argument when it's less likely to affect you personally.

What are you actually claiming here? You stance is unclear.

That this is a contentious topic with biases on both sides. One group clearly benefits from any accusations being squashed before ever being investigated. Another benefits from never having to prove their accusations hold merit.

This is why due process is important.

I see this a lot in these discussions. What do you think Trump or Cosby's accusers gained by their accusations holding merit?

Yes, generally powerful men disproportionately benefit from accusations that a rape claim is false.

No doubt some are false, but have not seen any evidence suggesting the majority are false.

> That is no reason to jump to a default "assume the accusation is false".

That's also not what I was trying to say. I only explained why testimony is far more doubted in rape cases than in most other cases. In general, I agree with you that accusations should be treated as unproven, so neither false nor true; we have a justice system to give a final verdict.

> No, they need to be treated as unproven, a very critical difference.

Right. I have a jar of gumballs and tell you I think there is an even number of gumballs in it. Do you believe me? If you don't, does that mean you believe there are in fact an odd number of gumballs in it? No, you do not believe either that there are an odd or an even number, because you just don't know. For a criminal accusation , your initial belief should not be guilty or innocent, it should be, "I just don't know".

Yeah, "it is unverified or untested or unproven" seems to be a very hard concept for "black and white" brains to process. People keep following up "it is unproven" with "well then it must be false".

EDIT: judging by the downvotes, they are also making the leap to the original gumball counter must be lying ...

> including testimony FROM THE VICTIM, is evidence of the crime. Just for some reason, in rape cases, we go all wonky with this principle.

In a criminal trial:

Victim: This person did it

Defendant: No I didn't

Not guilty

That is not how it works, a large number of people are convicted on eye witness testimony from a single accuser.

Yes, they shouldn't.

1. By the public at large it should not be treated in any regard, false or not.

2. The state is the only authorized monopoly of violence and they should treat unproven and untrue as identical, and the only place where that decision is made is in a courtroom.

3. The 'believe the victims' activists however are rightfully (IMHO) suggesting to break principle #2 because there is institutional and systemic supression of the rule of law being applied properly. I would consider this civil disobedience.

4. The state needs to get it's act together and administer the law properly. Only through reform can they regain the legitimacy that is required for #2.

5. Those reforms should focus on racism, sexism and classism. It should focus on what part of the law is too ambiguous for either law enforcement and the judiciary branch.

6. This might include actually blinding the court, i.e. offer only verifiable facts that are admissable and can not be utilized as widgets for race, gender or social economic positions.

If you don't think the legal system has a problem ask yourself why every lawyer recommends the defendant to wear a suit to court. How could it matter if the process was assumed to be without bias.

Sorry, don't see how 3 in your "syllogism" is remotely true. If 10 employees of yours come to you and accuse another employee of sexual harassment and you fire that employee, at no point were you acting as the state or using violence.

Nor was justice being served at any point. Depending on the terms of the employment contract, firing anyone is just business as usual.

The problematic part is that sexual harassment is a crime though. Both the act and accusation warrant court. Not to fire someone from their job, but to prosecute them under criminal law.

> The state is the only authorized monopoly of violence and they should treat unproven and untrue as identical, and the only place where that decision is made is in a courtroom.

This is completely wrong. If the state treated all accusations as untrue prior to conviction, they would not send armed men to haul you to prison, bar you from release unless you can bail yourself out (or sometimes not at all), and not have a prosecutor charge you with a crime.

This is no petty distinction. In order to function in its judiciary role, the state in fact must distinguish between plausibly true accusations and not plausible accusations, and must treat certain plausibly true accusations as "unproven" but not untrue, and take steps to make sure the accused does not flee into another country or commit further crimes.

You are right. There is a lot more too it.

Although arresting and jailing someone is not being justice being administered, it is facilitating justice and fact finding and it itself is indeed an act of violence.

The legal system may have problems but that is about implementation, the fundamental principles of presumption of innocence, that no harm should come to the innocent, that all are equal before the law, and that truth comes before all other concerns; these are fine principles and I would say that problems with the legal system mostly stem from straying from these principles. Perhaps you disagree?

I somewhat disagree. It's indeed in the implemention of the principles where things go wrong, but I do believe that requires reform.

In between golden principles and everyday court are a lot of pragmatic laws and regulations. That is where I would like to see reform. To help the system full fill it's ideals and principles, especially the blindness of the justice.

This is bonkers. We are innocent until proven guilty, not "unproven".

Witness testimony on its own is circumstantial evidence in general. Witnesses are very unreliable.

We are innocent until proven guilty, I never disputed that.

I'm saying the accusation, the witness testimony, is NOT assumed false, the accusation is simply unproven.

If the jury/judge believes the testimony, they may convict on that testimony. Then the accused is proven guilty.

That the accusation started off being false and then magically became true when when the jury believed it is the bonkers belief here.

The fact that witness testimony is unreliable is a big part of WHY the accused is presumed innocent.

All criminal accusations need to be treated as unproven, of course, could not agree more. Also, all those accused of a crime (and those not!) need to be treated as innocent until they are proven guilty.

The West has largely abandoned "small-l" liberalism. Not yet formally in many cases but defacto in terms of government actions and the views of the people.

That's the burden for incarceration, not for making a personal best guess about guilt. Even far below best guess, would you send your kid with a camp councilor that you were 20% sure was guilty of something like that?

I probably would be doubtful even at 1%, sure. But there's no denying that this ruins the life of 99 innocent people for every actual criminal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

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