Comment by 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.
> 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.
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.
"The system" is not just the justice system. If the justice system is relying on wrong evaluations by experts, that's still the system doing harm instead of good. And if it is known that so-called "experts" in a field can get things this wrong, the justice system should not be relying on their confident assertions.