Presumption of Guilt [LWN.net]

Presumption of Guilt

Posted Oct 14, 2006 2:38 UTC (Sat) by zenaan (subscriber, #3778)
In reply to: Hans Reiser arrested by tmk
Parent article: Hans Reiser arrested

Presumption of Guilt is widely practiced today in the 'western' nations. Eg. if you are stopped while driving, by police, twice, and on each occasion they allege you are driving without a license, then on the second occasion, their procedure for default consequence is to imprison you, and only release you if you sign a Bail Undertaking promising not to drive.

Whether you sign or not, you are required to accept some form of punishment before conviction. You are presumed to be guilty and must stop living a normal life (normal including driving), until your court case ends.

See http://www.UPMART.org for details

Things are not as free as they might otherwise seem,
Zenaan

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Presumption of Guilt

Posted Oct 14, 2006 17:26 UTC (Sat) by kevinbsmith (guest, #4778) [Link]

To save others the pain of struggling through the poorly-written UPMART.org site:

The story is from Australia. The woman was accused of driving a car that was not registered (as opposed to driving without a driver's license). She claims the car was registered at the time. Normally this minor offence would result in a small fine if proven. Because she was unwilling to give up driving until the trial, she was held in jail for almost a year while awaiting trial.

Presumption of Guilt

Posted Oct 15, 2006 9:34 UTC (Sun) by zenaan (subscriber, #3778) [Link]

When she was released, there still had been no trial. During her entire imprisonment, she had had no trial, and no conviction.

I agree with the principle that, at least in the case of a small matter ('summary offence'), there should be a presumption of innocence, before trial and before conviction has occurred.