“Guilty Before Proven Innocent”
Nobody in that story was “proven innocent” of anything.
True.
As with most "not guilty" verdicts.
Assuming Balko has the facts right, the Coulomb family looks "not guilty to me. For example:
In the other three incidents federal prosecutors claimed were part of the drug conspiracy, state charges were dropped before getting to trial. In one, an undercover police officer alleged that in December 1999 he met Sammie Davis Jr. under the Colomb home’s carport to purchase cocaine. Years later, at the federal trial, the man who built the carport testified that it had not existed in December 1999. It wouldn’t be built for another year.
So true... but that’s the point. They did not have to be proven INNOCENT. They had to be proven GUILTY and from what I can see from the story, there was not enough manufactured evidence and testimony available to be able to “prove” that lie.