Well, they are innocent until proven guilt, right? So it only makes sense that we side with the suspect. Making people prove innocence isn't the right way to go.
No, you're saying the burden of proof is on them. You are asking them to convince you. You are asking for evidence. You are asking for their side of the story. But you don't think the accused is guilty until you are convinced.
Just a semantic difference maybe. When you said "we side with the suspect" I took that to mean you were believing the suspect over the accuser, which you can't do without believing the accuser is lying. In the case of sexual assault, that most often means you're going to believe the man's word over the woman's; each case is its own, but in our society there's a long history of people favoring men over women, and it ain't always because they can only make a decision once a criminal conviction has been rendered.
And either way, we act on information all day, every day, and the vast majority of it hasn't been proven in a court of law. Reasonable people can listen to two competing claims and use their own experience to decide what's more likely true, or decide that there's not enough information given.
When someone is accused of sexual assault or rape it's a headline, front page news. When someone is a exonerated, it's page 8 news.
There is a great movie called "The Hunt" starring Mads Mickkelson that is about a guy that is falsely accused of sexual assualt. It is interesting how just an accusation can wreck your life (relationships with your friends and family) even if you are exonerated. It's worth a watch if you've got the time.
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u/jaasx Oct 14 '17
Well, they are innocent until proven guilt, right? So it only makes sense that we side with the suspect. Making people prove innocence isn't the right way to go.