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You're reading Why is "not guilty" not the same as "innocent"?
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Comments
.. and if your not guilty of the crime your charged with why does that not make you innocent?
by -O-uknow on December 7th, 2007
Because our justice system does not measure innocence. All it measures is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
by Anonymous on December 7th, 2007
No need at first.. because our justice system presumes you to be innocent until proven guilty. Only when proven guilty must innocence then be proven to reverse the verdict. That's when it is measured.
by -O-uknow on December 7th, 2007
Our justice system presumes you innocent, but that does not mean you are innocent. We never prove innocence in our system. The only thing our justice system ever tests is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Moreover, it is a binary test. That is, you can only be adjudicated as guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, or not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
by Anonymous on December 7th, 2007
What absolute rubbish. By your rule I can't say I'm innocent of J.F.Kennedy's murder in 1963 (when i wasn't even born) because I was guilty of running a red light last week.
I wish people like you would understand that "guilty", "not guilty" and "innocent" have nothing to do with degrees of guilt or whether the defendent is a "good" or "bad" person. They have to do with our *knowledge* of events. A person found "not guilty" MAY be guilty, or he MAY be innocent. We don't know which. The convention in most free societies is in such circumstances to presume innocence.
by probro on August 3rd, 2010
“A person found "not guilty" MAY be guilty, or he MAY be innocent. We don't know which.”
This is not actually true. “Guilty” or “not guilty” are legal conclusions made by the court. Thus, a person found “not guilty” may have actually violated the law, but that person is definitively “not guilty” because that is what the court decided.
by Anonymous on August 5th, 2010