> The defendant, Preston Thorpe, appeals his conviction for possession of a controlled drug with intent to sell
He may have done other things, but his conviction was for possession with intent, and that seems to be why he's locked up. It doesn't make anything else he's done acceptable, but in America he's innocent until proven guilty, and it doesn't seem he was found guilty of assault.
In any case, HN is very selective about this high evidential standard. People will make a lot of effort to give probable domestic abusers the benefit of the doubt, but pick one of HN's official enemies and suddenly any little scrap of evidence is considered quite sufficient!
That's not a good thing.
Edit: I cannot really believe that this, of all comments, is controversial. Living life treating everyone as guilty until they prove themselves innocent is... just shitty, let alone exhausting. Do people forget about how many times reddit and other ruined innocent people's lives?
Sometimes HN amazes me with new technology, interesting conversations, etc. Sometimes it amazes me when people are arguing that we should go through life treating people as guilty first, until they are proven innocent. I think I'll go back to not participating for awhile.
People proven guilty are not necessarily guilty. People proven not guilty are not necessarily innocent. The legal standard exists because a system needs standards.
That being said I wouldn't have much patience for a "merely" accused murderer or child predator in my personal life, just as I also don't have much patience for a doctor who refuses to prescribe me antibiotics because the chance they could help me is "only" 1%. I don't really care that it's socially irresponsible when it comes to my personal assessment of risk.
Is your assertion that random internet commenters get it right more than the courts...?
>"innocent until proven guilty" should apply outside of the legal system is lazy
How is guilty until proven innocent less "lazy"?
The person you love comes to you and tells you that they've been attacked by your shady friend. Do you defend your friend from the accusation because "they're innocent until proven guilty" or do you use your judgement and decide that the person you love is telling the truth because you have a lifetime of trust in them?
so you saying that court is useless because its not perfet???? its easy to complaint about something but give NOTHING to improve it
You would not do better than people in charge because EASY to say something is wrong but you dont have ANSWER that improve this current standards
https://www.wmur.com/article/man-facing-carfentanil-charge-r...
Why should internet comments follow criminal law, and not eg civil law, or some other standard?
Just because someone is guilty or not doesn't separate other facts of the case.
In an extreme example: I'm ok with the court letting someone off who murdered someone, because the police didn't follow proper procedure wrt evidence/confessions/witness testimony. Our legal system should be held to the highest standard when convicting someone of a crime. That doesn't stop me from believing that the defendant actually did the crime or not.
Then how do you explain laws against slander and libel?
You can't label someone guilty of a crime just because you feel it to be true.
Going through life treating everyone as guilty until proven innocent sounds like an exhausting and negative way to treat everyone, and harms more people overall.
There's no actual confirmation in that report that her arm was actually broken or that she was actually beaten. There's no medical examination that happened here that is cited.
That would still be required in a civil trial with preponderance of evidence. What if she was on drugs and did it to herself? (Not saying that's what happened). We don't know what happened from this document and that has nothing to do with this charge or his appeal.
There's a difference between "we want to lock this person up and take away their liberty, so we should be basically certain" versus "look man he's been done for drugs and she ended up with a broken arm, I don't trust this person".
Everyone is of course free to make up their own mind, but when making public accusations I would at least expect an honest effort to keep those accusations factually correct.
The original link does not say that the girlfriend reported the broken arm to the police. The police were called by her mother, who made the allegation against Thorpe. The article above says:
> According to [Thorpe's lawyer]’s appeal, Abogast told police she had fallen three days before Thorpe’s arrest and doctors at Elliot Hospital said her arm was broken in three places.
The original link says that she had scars and scabbing on her face, but this link says that Thorpe also had scars and scabbing, which the police noted in their report as consistent with drug abuse.
I'm not one to disbelieve women when they report abuse. In this case, the alleged victim didn't report any abuse, a third party who was not witness to any alleged crimes did. It's also very unusual to have your arm broken in three places, call your mom to say what happened, and then not seek any kind of treatment. I feel sad for everyone involved, because it's clear to me at least that the drug issues were the crux of the matter (which is corroborated by the actions and findings of the state). Without a statement from the girlfriend or a finding by the state, any suggestion of domestic abuse is unwarranted speculation.
There's no scenario here where this guy is innocent. The distinction here is whether he's a wife-beating drug dealer or just a drug dealer. There's some evidence to suggest the former but not really enough that you can definitely state it.
Personally, I'd give a convicted drug dealer less benefit of the doubt than the average person.
However, on any individual case the same is not true, because that moves from talking about averages and general cases into specifics, and the burden of proof changes significantly. While there is a connection on average, that isn't enough to say any specific drug abuser commits domestic abuse. For that, ideally, you need criminal charges proven in court. That's missing here.
On the other hand, GP is objectively right ("innocent until proven guilty doesn't extend to internet comments"). I also think that it’s better for random people to be able to post their terrible judgements than any feasible alternative, because such an alternative probably leads to good judgements also censored. We can mitigate (not eliminate) bad judgements, e.g. by educating people better and shaming those who shame others more; and we can minimize mob justice’s effect on critical government functions like welfare and prison sentencing, e.g. by running them on mostly objective procedures and with staff who aren’t influenced by mob opinion.
Targeted harassment and doxxing (and swatting, getting people fired/divorced/ruined when they don’t deserve to be, etc.) is different (and to be clear, IMO very bad). People posting opinions in a way that the target can block (which they can usually do with blocklists and word filters) is fine. The main point I’m trying to make is: if opinions in random internet comments lead to targeted harassment and real-world consequences even when the opinions are “bad” (e.g. bigoted, hypocritical), it's less effective to try and prevent the internet comments' existence, than to reduce the factors causing them to influence the real world and create factors preventing influence.