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Dear Shadow Minister,

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You wrote :

1. « The presumption of innocence grants no one immunity »
It was certainly not intended to do so, Shadow Minister, but, regrettably, that is the antagonistic effect it has when judging sex crimes. It is not just because of the traumatism they cause, resulting in long delays before victims are psychologically apt to report them. It is especially due the nature of such crimes :

• perpetrated when the victim and predator were alone (no witness)
• no material evidence
• no proof the victim did not consent
• no admission of guilt by the accused

That is why only about 4.25% of sex crimes brought before the courts result in a conviction and 95.75% of defendants are declared innocent.
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2. « What is does demand is that the authorities do their job and prove their case »

As I indicated in my previous posts, the dice are heavily loaded in favour of the defendant by the “presumption of innocence” before the trial even commences. Because of the particular intimate nature of sex crimes, both parties should be able to plead their case on an equal footing. Neither one nor the other should be privileged. The case should be judged on its merits by a jury composed equally of men and women.

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Commenting on the doctrine of the “presumption of innocence”, the English philosopher and jurist, Jeremy Bentham, noted in “A Treatise on Judicial Evidence” (1825) :

« At first it was said to be better to save several guilty men, than to condemn a single innocent man; others, to make the maxim more striking, fixed on the number ten, a third made this ten a hundred, and a fourth made it a thousand. All these candidates for the prize of humanity have been outstripped by I know not how many writers, who hold, that, in no case, ought an accused to be condemned, unless the evidence amount to mathematical or absolute certainty According to this maxim, nobody ought to be punished, lest an innocent man be punished ».

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3. « That there are hundreds of examples of people spending decades in jail is evidence that even with these protections the innocent can suffer »

You may be right, Shadow Minister. If you have any statistics on that perhaps you may be kind enough to share them with me. Personally, I suspect that there are far more criminals roaming the streets than innocent people in jail.

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