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BGonline.org Forums
USBGF Board of Directors� Statement on New York Post articles regarding Rod Covlin
Posted By: Daniel Murphy In Response To: USBGF Board of Directors� Statement on New York Post articles regarding Rod Covlin (Gregg Cattanach)
Date: Thursday, 22 April 2010, at 4:08 p.m.
Gregg wrote: When I hear 'innocent until proven guilty', the speaker is almost always talking about the crime/potential criminal, i.e. a reference to innocence in fact, not the legal meaning(s) in court.
If that is what you've understood speakers you've heard to mean, Gregg, well enough, but it seems odd to me that they would be referring to factual guilt, as opposed to legal guilt. It's odd because of course you earlier raised a valid point, that "once the crime is committed, there is never any factual innocence." I would think everyone would understand that. For instance, if it's a fact that Johnny has stolen my car, then Johnny is factually guilty of having stolen my car, regardless of whether he's ever found guilty in a court of law, or whether there's even a law against stealing automobiles. However, "once the crime is committed" presumes both that an act has been committed and that the act was a crime. And a crime is an act punishable by (criminal) law. If the act is not illegal, it's not a crime. In which case, the actor may be factually and morally guilty of having committed an act that should not have been committed, but not factually or legally guilty of having committed a crime. It is perhaps of more than semantic interest that the legal presumption of innocence is a legal presumption of factual innocence: if you're ever brought to trial, the jury is to presume you to be factually innocent, to disregard the fact that, "presumably," the police believed they had sufficient grounds to arrest you, and that the prosecution believed it had sufficient grounds to charge you with a crime and sufficient evidence to prove its case, and to not find you guilty unless the prosecution proves your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
I'll grant that using the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" without "presumed" or "considered" risks misunderstanding. Thus we find in the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948): "Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence." And in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1953): "Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law." And in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789): "Tout homme étant présumé innocent jusqu'à ce qu'il ait été déclaré coupable ...." And in the Constitution of the United States of America: oops, it's not in there.
It's not the case, however, in my experience, that neglecting to prefix "innocent until proved guilty with "presumed" or "considered" is usually a sign that the speaker has miscomprehended or misapplied the distinction between legal, moral and factual guilt.
But I'm not guilty," said K.; "it's a mistake. And how can a person be guilty anyway? After all, we're all people here, one as the other." "That's true," said the priest, "but that's how guilty people talk." -- Franz Kafka, The Trial. Cited in "n Guilty Men," Alexander Volokh, http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm
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