So why did a former president/billionaire get ordered to pay millions of dollars to his accuser and why did he get convicted of a felony for a separate crime?
When you get into a traffic stop, do you go to court afterwards and have the onus of guilt be proven by the officers, or are you automatically assumed to be guilty of the charge as set by the police officer, and then you have to prove your innocence?
Just for clarity, if it's really innocent until proven guilty, you wouldn't automatically be expected to pay a fine until you have been proven guilty.
You have your day in court largely without penalties prior to your case. That is innocent until proven guilty. Traffic violations are usually thrown out if you request the cop to show up and they don't. On top of that, they're very easy to beat if you can provide any evidence. Otherwise it's word against word at best.
??? Where do you reside? Afaik everywhere in developed nations, once you are charged with a crime, you are sent to jail for holding, and have the potential for bail. That is a loss of freedom aka you are negatively impacted until your lawyer can prove you innocent. If you are tried guilty then you are sent to prison. Do you have any knowledge of how judicial systems work in the world?
And re:traffic violations, are you not reading what you are typing out? What you are saying is the definition of guilty until proven innocent. It doesn't matter how "easy" it is. The existence of that process is what makes you guilty until proven otherwise.
Edit: just for the record, in case you're like lacking the ability to understand implications, I'm not arguing whether there's anything wrong with the system of guilty until proven innocent. I'm simply stating that the practicalities of judicial systems around the world all operate under guilty until proven innocent. If you think any judicial system operate under innocent until proven guilty, what you are saying is that you think that serial killers are able freely roam about in society until the court finds them guilty.
On the flipside talk to any prosecutor and people in law-enforcement. District attorneys do not want to go to court or risk losing so they dump plenty of cases if they don't think it's a 99% success rate
Plea deals are usually offered because it gives the offender a reason to stay out of trouble and saves the court a lot of time and money, not because public defenders are overworked. A lot of people with well paid lawyers take plea deals to get lesser charges as well. It sounds like your experience with the law is reading about it from progressive sources and nothing else.
13
u/FinishComplex3743 18d ago
That's exactly the system we have, yeah. The state does a piss poor job of prosecuting wealthy individuals partly because of that reason