MB and Presumption of Innocence - 99 Bad Guys and 1 Good One
=== Those Gulags Are Spacious, Komrade ===
In Russian criminal trials, the "defendant" is always guilty. Well, not always: only 99.64% of the time.
Russian judicial philosophy is rooted in the idea that the rights of the victim, and of the state (representing the community, victimized) weigh as heavily (sic) as the rights of the accused.
In Russia, they're not nearly as concerned with a poor schmuck going to the gulag undeservedly, as they are concerned with somebody getting away with something they shouldn't.
So they avoid jury trials wherever possible, because juries acquit defendants a lot. When juries do acquit, post-KGB operatives often storm the courtroom and re-arrest the defendant and take him away for punishment.
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And that's talking about today, in post-Soviet perestroika! We're not talking about Gorbachev's USSR, much less Joseph Stalin's.
In America, we'd rather see 99 guilty men go free than see one innocent man executed. But in Russia, it's not even a 50-50 philosophy: they'd rather see 99 innocent men hung, than one real bad guy go free. We're talking about Putin, not the man in the street.
Most Americans are well and truly out-of-touch as to what life is like elsewhere, and that affects our decisionmaking. Grotesquely.
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Codified law is only an attempt to "quantify" decent behavior.
We can't say, "drive safe," so we say, "drive 55 mph and drive sober." Even sober has to be defined, but the 0.08% metric isn't from On High. It is nothing more and nothing less than an attempt to define decent behavior. Don't run over kids.
"Presumption of innocence" is not a technical principle. It is one of our attempts to define decency, and humanity. It is one aspect of the difference between Stalin's Russia, and having a life worth living.
In Russia, Milton Bradley would have to prove that he was innocent, or he would be punished.
You think that makes accusation a trigger-finger game? You're right. You think people live in secure frames of mind there? You're wrong.
You think that emphasizing "the rights of the victim" is progressive thinking? We're going to need some gulags, komrade. It costs too much money to put defendants in King County lockup.
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