@Lustig Andrei,
Quote:That's the most telling statement about yourself you've made yet. I pray that you never ever end up on a jury in a capital case or any other case where the punishment might be severe. You'd be going in there with your mind firmly made up. "Our fine police arrested him and brought him to trial; he must be guilty."
It is not unreasonably biased to think that most people who are arrested are arrested with good reason and with evidence to support the arrest. I don't think that all our police departments and prosecutors offices are cesspools of corruption where ethics and legal obligations are willfully disregarded. It would be downright crazy to believe that most people who are arrested did not engage in the criminal acts and violations they are charged with. That would suggest that law enforcement makes arrests and brings charges
in most cases without sufficient evidence to do so, and that most judges collude in this charade by finding probable cause where there is none, and that most defense attorneys are deadwood who stand mute while all this is going on. I'm not paranoid enough to believe that is the way our system operates.
The presumption of legal innocence at an eventual trial does not mean we disregard the possibility, or the probability, of guilt when someone is arrested, otherwise all arrests would make no sense. I think we have to use a little common sense here.
Whether a defendant is guilty, in terms of having actually committed the crime, is quite apart from the issue of whether the state can meet it's burden of proof and convince a jury of that guilt at trial. The jurors must presume innocence at the outset of the trial, that is their obligation, and the state must meet their burden of proof. And, if I was on a jury, I would never assume legal guilt simply because the person was on trial, the state would have to convince me of guilt, beyond a reasonable doubt, on the basis of the evidence they presented.
But what sometimes happens in trials now, that's been dubbed "the CSI effect", is that jurors demand or expect evidence, like DNA, that supports certainty of guilt, beyond any and all doubt, because that's what they've seen in the crime investigation shows, like CSI. But not all crimes yield that type of evidence. So, even where the state has a very strong circumstantial case, the jurors might remain with reasonable doubts simply because they haven't seen the type of hard evidence they've come to expect, from these CSI type shows, to erase all doubt. That does create a unique kind of challenge for prosecutors because they can now wind up with jury pools who have been influenced, prior to the start of trials, by these fictionalized crime dramas that can create unrealistic expectations regarding types of evidence. So, that's a possible additional factor that can work to bias potential jurors in some cases, but that one can bias them against the prosecution.
If you believe that most people arrested did not commit the crimes with which they are charged, you must be very paranoid regarding the government, because you'd see the government as arresting mainly innocent people. I'm not sure I'd want you on a jury in that case either.
But I don't think any of this is relevant to the topic question of whether perp walks, or the fact that arrests are made public, has any real influence on jurors in terms of presumption of innocence.
Obviously, the state presumes guilt when they bring charges. That alone is not going to convince a jury. And having seeing a perp walk months earlier certainly won't convince them either.
And, you don't have to worry, I'd never wind up on a jury in a capital case--I don't support the death penalty.
Jared Lee Loughner, the defendant in the shootings that involved Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is guilty, he did commit those acts, the crimes were witnessed and he was arrested at the scene. No one with any sense needs a trial to know whether Jared Lee Loughner did the deeds with which he is charged. There is no realistic presumption of innocence in this case.
The only real issue is his mental state at the time of the crime and whether he can be executed since he faces the death penalty. In Arizona, you cannot be found not guilty on the basis of insanity, but he can be found guilty but insane.
So far, they haven't been able to find him competent to stand trial. He has another hearing in about a week and a half to evaluate his competency once more.
Should the public not know the identity of the person they arrested for trying to kill Rep. Giffords--and who, in fact, killed 6 other people? Do you really think that publicizing his identity at the time of his arrest will influence the eventual outcome of this case in any way? Are Jared Lee Loughner's legal rights being compromised because we know his identity prior to his trial?
I was the victim of a burglary in which the police caught the "suspect" right near my home carrying my property. They not only told me his name, they asked me if I wanted to see him sitting in his jail cell before they returned my property to me, an offer I declined. Would you have expected me to afford him the presumption of innocence? His fingerprints were found inside my home, my property was found on his person. And it didn't bother me one bit that our little local paper mentioned his name in their story about the burglary and his arrest. If that mention of his name in the paper harmed his reputation or good name so be it. I'm sure his reputation suffered more by the fact that he was sentenced to four years in prison after he accepted a plea deal in the case.
