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To: CobaltBlue
But a defendant in a criminal trial isn't found "innocent," he's found "not guilty." If it really were the same as "argument from ignorance," the failure to prove guilt would mean a finding of innocence. I think maybe in Scotland there is a finding of innocence but not in the USA or England.

Ah, old Irving probably could have worded that section a little more clearly. It's really the presumption of innocence that's an argument from ignorance. We presume that the accused is innocent until proven guilty. But that presumption is itself an argument from ignorance - we don't, in fact, know that he is innocent, but we presume him to be innocent until proven otherwise. And insofar as that presumption may carry through to an acquittal, that acquittal may itself be an argument from ignorance - if the defendant does not present an affirmative defense to establish his own innocence, but is acquitted by virtue of the fact that the prosecution has failed to bear the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, we still don't know that the defendant is, in fact, innocent - we simply default to an acquittal in the absence of evidence to the contrary, whether that acquittal is actually true to the facts or not. And in that case, the "not guilty" verdict is roughly equivalent to the verdict that the Scots have, but we don't - a verdict of "not proven".

But regardless of whether the verdict is a logical fallacy or not, we agree as a society to sacrifice a certain amount of logical cogency in the name of justice - as the authors paraphrase, we agree that it is better that 100 guilty men should go free than that one innocent man should be hanged. And in pursuit of that end, we agree to treat our ignorance as though it were, in fact, an affirmative conclusion, even though it isn't.

26 posted on 12/19/2003 6:12:49 PM PST by general_re ("You shouldn't treat people like objects. They aren't that valuable." - P.J. O'Rourke)
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To: general_re; CobaltBlue
At the risk of seeming unduly combatitive, under the presumptions of our Bill of Rights, I'd argue that the finding of "not guilty" should be the correct outcome of a criminal prosecution that failed to convict. If we were being logically severe, the phrase should read "not proved guilty", which would then properly imply nothing about the innocence of the party in question.

However, The principle of double jeopardy suggests to me that the law, in fact, reads a "not guilty" verdict as it stands, not as the Scots would have it, or as in "not proved guilty". I think US custom on this matter is morally correct. If the state, with it's virtually unlimited resources, chooses to bring an individual, with limited resources, to trial, and fails to make it's case, the morally correct conclusion, in my opinion, is "not guilty".

37 posted on 12/20/2003 2:38:03 PM PST by donh
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