Kamille Bidan said:
Oh? Because you're so knowledgeable.
Evidently I am, at least by comparison. For example, I knew that the kid here had been charged. I knew bail had been set. I knew that there were cases analogous to the ones you tried to bring up.
You didn't.
It might behoove you to not try and talk down to me when I'm the one who's taken the time to inform themself.
chikusho said:
Well, considering how many have gone free after guilt could not be proven beyond reasonable doubt, the presumption of innocence is a very real thing. A thing which has, over time, degraded to become meaningless.
If you deny that it has ever existed, that's one thing. But if I say that "dinosaurs are no longer roaming the earth" I'm guessing you wouldn't need to point out whether or not that was a _new thing_.
But dinosaurs once roamed the earth, which is the key difference. Pretending that anything has actually changed here is pretty bloody ridiculous. It's not like everyone went free and then one day they held the kid or something. People have been held for ridiculous reasons through the history of the US. Including, as Kamille inadvertently brought up, joking about shooting/killing the President.
The only real change is we now have social media, where people can say stupid things on a grander scale than ever before. The right to presumed innocence hasn't really changed, and jails have been full of people presumed innocent in the past. The fact is, historically we do not treat every case evenly so this is not so much a sign of the times, but a case that got garnered a larger response.
And, since people seem to need to be reminded, I am not defending that response. They went waaaay overboard and should have dropped it when there turned out to be, you know, no evidence of any wrongdoings or plans to do such.
What I am doing is pointing out that this is not a new response, or a different response. It's a very American response.