← Back to context

Comment by mlindner

2 years ago

You say that, but this doesn't seem like presumption of innocence. A country with a presumption of innocence doesn't take your child away from you without trial.

9 comments

mlindner

Reply
tsimionescu  2 years ago

A presumption of innocence doesn't mean that a trial is needed before (what are supposed to be) basic safety measures.

Judges can issue preliminary injunctions before trial in all places in the world. A justice system that can't take any coercive action until the end of a trial would simply not function.

In particular though, cases like this aren't even related to the presumption of innocence. The state believes that the child has suffered harm, so a judge takes them in protective custody. Who is harming the child remains to be determined, but taking the child into custody is supposed to protect the child immediately.

Of course, this can be, like in this case, wrongly applied to disastrous effects. But it has also saved many children from abusive parents, where leaving them without state protection for years while the trial advances would have scarred them permanently or killed them.

  • pdonis  2 years ago

    > Of course, this can be, like in this case, wrongly applied to disastrous effects. But it has also saved many children from abusive parents

    So what is the relative frequency of these two outcomes? You can't ignore the wrong applications; if they outnumber the proper ones, then the system is doing more harm than good.

    • tsimionescu  2 years ago

      I don't know, but this particular case is actually quite uncommon. I forgot to mention this, but apart from everything else, this is a case where the justice system actually followed the opinions and recommendations of actual experts - except that those experts seem to be very wrong on this topic.

      So, in this particular case, I would say that the justice system did it's job quite well, and it's a massive failure of the medical system that shaken baby syndrome is still identified as a real thing by real, board-certified doctors.

      1 reply →

ascorbic  2 years ago

I'm willing to bet that almost all countries have a different standard of proof for taking a child away than for criminal trial, and none will wait for the outcome of a trial to do this.

  • mlindner  2 years ago

    I don't deny that many other countries may also be missing elements of the presumption of innocence.

Muromec  2 years ago

Pre-trial detention is a thing pretty much everywhere despite literally locking innocent people up before a trial.