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Comment by rappatic | Hacker News Reader

Did you read my comment? I said:

> even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped

Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it. In fact, reading the chat logs makes his guilt pretty clear. Of course, because the whole operation was a scam, there's little he could have been convicted of. Yet just because the murder was never carried out doesn't mean he didn't intend to have someone assassinated. In my book, paying someone money to kill another person is definitely grounds for imprisonment.

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So you think people should be sentenced based on charges that were not proven in court?

That happens all the time, when people confess to a charge ahead of time, instead of proceeding to a trial. Remember that the purpose of the trial is to find out whether they are guilty when there is a factual dispute about that question. Here, I suppose the existence of a factual dispute is itself disputed: does that need to go to a jury, or is it enough that the trial judge and the appeal court looked at the record and decided there wasn't a dispute?

Confessing under the law is the same as being convicted though.

Certainly not always. Sometimes a person will confess a crime under immunity, and not be charged. Ulbricht didn't confess the murder for hire formally, and he wasn't charged with it. The controversy is that his role in it was used to influence the sentencing decision for a different crime.

No. I'm talking more from an ethical standpoint. I think someone who hires contract killers deserves to go to prison. I also think people shouldn't be convicted for charges that were not proven in court. As I said before, in Ross' case, the charge was dropped.

So you should apologize for not paying attention to the original comment before stamping in to 'correct' it. A little manners goes a long way.

The case for this was dropped because he was sentenced for it in the other case.

> Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it

That’s exactly what it means under the presumption of innocence.

Advocating for the continued imprisonment of someone for something they are legally considered innocent of, is quite literally vigilantism.

> Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it.

If you had a trial and they can't prove that, then yes it means you are innocent of this charge in the eyes of the law

Ah that's not strictly true. I believe Scotland is the only place in the world I am aware of where there is Innocent, unproven, and Guilty verdicts. I believe in reality a not guilty verdict is, we didn't have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt this person committed the crime. Finding someone not guilty is a legal term. Considering whether someone is innocent or not is more of a moral/factual term.

> I believe in reality a not guilty verdict is, we didn't have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt this person committed the crime.

That’s a description of the Scottish “not proven” verdict, not a “not guilty” verdict.

Not proven in Scotland and not guilty in almost every other country are the equivalent. Innocent is the outlier verdict in Scotland that the rest of the world doesn't have.

That's also a description of the "not guilty" verdict. Guilty is "beyond a reasonable doubt", and "not guilty" is those circumstances that are not Guilty.

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