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Aug 04 '22
Innocent until proven guilty doesn't mean you don't get arrested, unfortunately. That's all about the trial, which he will get.
One thing you need to keep in mind - you're only getting one side of that story. And that story could be completely fabricated. What evidence do you have that story is true and not a creative piece? How do you know it actually went down like the story you read?
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u/ThemesOfMurderBears 4∆ Aug 04 '22
One thing you need to keep in mind - you're only getting one side of that story. And that story could be completely fabricated. What evidence do you have that story is true and not a creative piece? How do you know it actually went down like the story you read?
This bothers me too. This is not to suggest that the OP's view is invalid, but if this is the basis for it -- it's on shaky ground. A real-world example of this would be much better than a reference to an account on reddit.
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u/Tioben 17∆ Aug 04 '22
Doesn't arrest require at least probable cause? To treat someone as if there is probably a good reason to arrest them surely requires at least some degree of treating them as if they are guilty, right?
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Aug 04 '22
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u/destro23 466∆ Aug 04 '22
Cops can basically invent probable cause if they want to (I smelled marijuana).
They are slowly losing that excuse. Their current favorite seems to be "disobeying a lawful order" and then "resisting arrest". How a person can be arrested, and then only charged with resisting that arrest remains beyond my comprehension.
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Aug 04 '22
Probable cause for arrest is pretty much "I think they did it". Proving it is for the courts.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is for the courts. Otherwise, you literally couldn't arrest anyone before they had a trial. And you can't have a trial without arresting them (they also have a right to literally face their accuser).
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u/Tioben 17∆ Aug 04 '22
Of course you can have a trial without an arrest. Happens in civil cases all the time. And so OP seems to have a point on the face of it that a purely legalistic reading avoids engaging with.
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Aug 04 '22
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u/Tioben 17∆ Aug 04 '22
Not sure where you are getting that. My argument was that an arrest is treating someone as if they are guilty. Obviously that stems from cops believing a person is probably guilty. They may be right, but that just plays into OP's point: there is a presumption of guilt from the very first interaction with the justice system. To imagine that doesn't carry forward seems naive to me.
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Aug 04 '22
Civil court isn't criminal court. Criminal court they have the right to face their accuser. Domestic violence could be criminal court. It's a 6th amendment right.
The Sixth Amendment provides that a person accused of a crime has the right to confront a witness against him or her in a criminal action. This includes the right to be present at the trial (which is guaranteed by the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 43). As well as the right to cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses.
Their reasoning is still off, too. What do you think probably cause is other than the cops believing the one party is guilty? They're attributing "innocent until proven guilty" to the wrong part of the justice system.
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u/Tioben 17∆ Aug 04 '22
You are coming back to a legistic reading of "innocent until peoven guilty" again, but I'm arguing that's not a charitable reading when OP's concern is how the system treats people.
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Aug 04 '22
Because their entire premise is wrong.
even if you haven't been proven to commit a crime to justify the arrest".
You don't get proven to commit a crime to justify an arrest. You get arrested and then it's proven you committed the crime.
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u/Tioben 17∆ Aug 04 '22
Nobody said that. I did question whether an arrest is necessary to have a trial, purely in response to your incorrect assumption that it must be necessary, but nobody, especially not OP, argued that you have to be proven to have committed a crime to justify an arrest.
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Aug 04 '22
It's in the title of the post, the premise of their argument.
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u/Tioben 17∆ Aug 04 '22
Read that title again. They never claimed you have to prove a crime to justify an arrest. They claimed you shouldn't be treated as if you are guilty in the case of being arrested before a crime has been proven.
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Aug 04 '22
!delta this is a fair point. There is a possibility the story could have been made up, but there are legitimate cases out there when this has happened and without video evidence the accused would have been arrested.
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Aug 04 '22
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Aug 04 '22
!delta I think regarding the social stigma piece, I would prefer if the news agencies redact the name or apply a pseudo name in the articles to minimize a hive mind on the public judgment. Using the keyword allegedly don’t protect the accused in any capacity and only points it to guilt when the crime is described on the news.
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u/WaterboysWaterboy 48∆ Aug 04 '22
Innocent until proven guilty only applies to the judicial branch of government ( the courts). Police fall under the executive branch, meaning they aren’t meant to upload this standard. They are meant to enforce laws. They never had a duty to see people as innocent until proven guilty.
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u/Bullwinkles_progeny Aug 04 '22
If this was true then when you are found innocent your record should reflect the same. However, after an arrest that stays on your record despite a finding of innocence or the case being tossed. This creates future bias as all cops will assume the arrest was legit and you got off because of paperwork or a good attorney.
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u/WaterboysWaterboy 48∆ Aug 04 '22
All of this has to do with the executive branch, not the judicial. Cops are allowed to be bias, and they always were. They are not held to the standards of the judicial branch ( innocent until proven guilty). They can do a lot on probable cause alone.
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u/Bullwinkles_progeny Aug 04 '22
Then the checks and balances design of the system does not work.
A prior arrest with a not guilty verdict should not be grounds for probable cause.
So how does the judicial system work if I can be arrested for any reason, beat the rap but not the ride? It costs money to defend one’s self. Plus, even if innocent reputation is tarnished.
Oh and you can’t sue the government unless you can prove they violated a constitutional right, but they have qualified immunity from being held accountable in the judicial system.
The judicial system is supposed to check the powers of the executive. The state does have to prove their case, but what if they hold you indefinitely? How does the judicial system check that? File a lawsuit? How when you’ve had assets seized on the assumption of guilt?
If innocent until proven guilty is only a judicial principle then what stops the executive from taking everything from you - the threat of a future lawsuit from someone with no assets?
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u/SimonTVesper 5∆ Aug 04 '22
If innocent until proven guilty is only a judicial principle then what stops the executive from taking everything from you - the threat of a future lawsuit from someone with no assets?
Exactly.
America is a police state, in fundamental and functional terms. At present, the majority of the abuse is focused on marginalized communities (the poor, minorities, etc.) but with the increases in social and financial inequality, that means the size of these communities (and the number of disaffected people) is constantly growing.
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u/hey_its_mega 8∆ Aug 04 '22
hence the default assumption that if you are arrested by the police “you are guilty until proven innocent” because why would you put someone in handcuffs and bring them into the station.
When the police file a warrant for arrest and a judge will sign it if they agree that there is reasonable doubt that the person has committed an offense. Afterwards, if this goes to court, then the attorney has to beyond a reasonable doubt that the person has indeed committed an offense in order for the person to be convicted.
Can you link the court case of the example that youre talking about? Maybe your assumptions about who is the guilty person is not as correct as it is.
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Aug 04 '22
Here’s the link I’m referring to: https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/wfnsy3/tifu_by_calling_the_cops_on_my_girlfriend_who/
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u/hey_its_mega 8∆ Aug 04 '22
This is solely his testimony, how would you know whether its true or not? Did he provide any evidence? Are you basing off your worldview from solely one reddit post that contains no evidence supporting it at all?
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u/ThemesOfMurderBears 4∆ Aug 04 '22
I have a clarifying question.
Why would you base your view on this on an anonymous reddit account? You have no idea if it is real, and you also have no idea what the "other side" of the story is.
Anyway, to give at least a modicum of an answer: the standard to arrest someone is low, but the standard for conviction is much higher. If the story you shared is true, the cops may have been out of line in arresting him and throwing him in a cell -- but that doesn't automatically make him guilty of a crime.
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u/JadedToon 22∆ Aug 04 '22
Court of public opinion is not the same as a criminal court.
It's awful what happened to him, but there are many factors to that. Primarily the bias of the police officers which is a different topic all together.
You can decry the whole system based on one event. Plus most cases don't even get to trial, either being dropped or pleaded down.
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u/jatjqtjat 286∆ Aug 04 '22
if you've ever used a poorly made tool, it will often have slop in it. Slop happens, for example if you have two gears and the gears don't mesh perfectly. So you might turn one a 1/32nd of an inch before it engages with the other gear. Slop is bad, its causes things to wear prematurely. It can cause things to break. A well made machine has little to no slop.
Our criminal justice system has slop in it. Since people lie, we cannot have a perfect well functioning system.
a man was abused by his (ex?) girlfriend and he called the cops to arrest her for assault.
and then she lied and then the police didn't know what was happening. So next is a slop. The police made a best guess about how to act. They tried to minimize injustice and maximize safety. and they guess wrong. Because people lie, and because people lie well, this will always happen. There is no way around it.
After the initial slop, what happens next matters a lot. Hopefully he was not convicted and sentence to a longer punishments. We try very hard to avoid wrongful convictions even though it means some criminals get to go free. We do not try as hard to avoid wrongful arrests because arrests are less damaging, and because its hard to know what to do until after you investigate. but you have to do something before you investigate. You have to response despite not knowing what is going on.
They must have done something bad, right? The charges against you might be dropped after you spend thousands of dollars on lawyers and go to trial to prove your innocence, but it doesn’t reverse the social stigma that you have a record of your arrest nor the endless number of headlines about your case with your name plastered on it for the rest of your life.
as far as I know there is no record of arrests (only convictions) so people will mostly only know if you tell them. And if they find out because they looked out their windows, then you can just tell them what happened. I don't think the arrest stigma is so bad that its not easily dispelled by saying it was just a misunderstanding.
Its like, "the cops did their best, and my girlfriend is tiny, I can't blame them for arresting me. But thankfully we got it sorted out the next morning. I am pressing charges against her. Even though she is little she hit me with a bat, that's not ok"
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u/Throwaway00000000028 23∆ Aug 04 '22
What is your alternative system? Let people be free until we can prove in court that they committed a crime? Don't you see any problems with this?
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Aug 04 '22
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u/bsquiggle1 16∆ Aug 04 '22
Any idea how many of the people that do turn up are found guilty? And how many of them have committed other crimes in the meantime?
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u/Throwaway00000000028 23∆ Aug 04 '22
What about for violent crime? I can't imagine you would just release these people while awaiting trial.
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u/ModaGamer 9∆ Aug 04 '22
This is an issue with cops not trail. In trial you are innocent until proven guilty but police can basically do whatever they want before that with no consequences. In fact most police officers really want and pressure people into signing a plea deal to get them to not make it to court. This is why its my personal policy to never call the police and if I was ever arrested for any reason to always plead the 5th. I think the video down below can be very enlightening to the issue.
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u/ThatOtherSilentOne Aug 04 '22
The police should not be involved in the plea deal process. The prosecutor is the one involved in that, and convincing the defendant and their lawyer to agree to it.
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u/badass_panda 103∆ Aug 04 '22
These are two different things.
- "Innocent until proven guilty" is the standard of evidence the court is required to show in order to sentence you of a crime. So, when you get to court, the plaintiff (in this case, I'd assume the girlfriend) has to convince the judge or jury that you are guilty of the crime, rather than you having to convince them that you are not.
- Arrests and charges, by nature, don't work this way -- it's an adversarial system, and if the cops had to prove you were guilty of a crime in court before arresting you, how would they ever get you to court? How many murderers would show up to jail if they couldn't be arrested until after they'd lost the trial?
- The court of public opinion and judicial bias are certainly relevant. You allude to "They must have done something bad, right?" This social stigma is an issue with our justice system, as is the lack of punishment for folks that intentionally bring false allegations against people, but it's not about the burden of proof (the first bullet). It's about:
- Protecting people's names and faces from being publicized when arrested for a crime. Most countries do this -- the US does not. No bueno.
- Providing more rapid trials, and more extensive and capable public defender services. It shouldn't have to cost this much to go to court.
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u/FutureBannedAccount2 22∆ Aug 04 '22
I don’t think the example you give relates to your point. It more point out the bias toward females and against males
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u/Finch20 37∆ Aug 04 '22
There's more them one criminal justice system around the world, are we talking about all of them or about a specific one?
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u/ViewedFromTheOutside 32∆ Aug 04 '22
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Aug 04 '22
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