Comment by giantg2
16 days ago
"It’s impossible by design to distinguish between a clearly innocent person and a very suspicious person whose guilt couldn’t quite be proven"
Oh, you mean another innocent person? (Emphais mine)
16 days ago
"It’s impossible by design to distinguish between a clearly innocent person and a very suspicious person whose guilt couldn’t quite be proven"
Oh, you mean another innocent person? (Emphais mine)
They are innocent under the law, not necessarily innocent.
There's no functional difference in this context - the legal system determines legal issues.
There’s a functional difference if you’re trying to compute “tough-on-innocence statistics”, because it means that the target for the only possible metric is much higher than zero. A healthy criminal justice system should routinely rule people innocent; if nearly everyone who’s prosecuted is found guilty, that doesn’t mean prosecutors are being really picky about filing charges, it means the system doesn’t treat innocence as an acceptable outcome.
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