> Would you insist that we all treat O.J. Simpson as innocent?
The fair way is to withhold judgment (while presuming innocence) when there's a charge against someone but it hasn't been investigated. That's fair whether we're talking about courts or society. Society pronounced its judgment on O.J. after evidence was presented and witnesses testified.
The problem comes when people presume guilt based on a charge alone. Unfortunately, that's often what happens when high-emotion charges are leveled against someone.
We have a high standard for guilt in court because someone's freedom and perhaps life is on the line. You as a private citizen have a right to make decisions on less than a drawn-out court case and a sequestered jury.
So, in the eyes of the criminal courts, yes, OJ is still innocent. But would you have him babysit your kids based only on a reasonable doubt he's a multiple murderer?
> You as a private citizen have a right to make decisions on less than a drawn-out court case and a sequestered jury.
That's true, but it doesn't make my opinions morally justified.
But my point wasn’t about the verdict--the court’s, mine, or the public’s. It was that it is wrong to presume guilt anywhere—in court or in personal opinion—on the basis of a charge alone. (In OJ's case, we're all far past that, so I think bringing it up is a bit moot.)
I literally didn't bring up OJ. I was using the example already in use in the thread when I replied. The question, in a generic sense, is if you have two equally qualified candidates one of whom is acquitted and one of whom nobody's accused of wrongdoing, would you flip a coin or hire the one never accused?
> would you flip a coin or hire the one never accused?
I'd try to do neither. The reality is, no one is equally qualified because no one is identical to anyone else. There are always tradeoffs.
But I'd try to weigh those tradeoffs without being swayed either way by the fact that someone was once accused and later acquitted. Personally, I'm not even sure whether I'd be more or less likely to want to hire a person on the basis of that detail; I really think it's not evidence of anything.
It's like the influence of an independent variable Y in the logical formula "X implies Z", or like a "don't care" cell in a Karnaugh map -- it signifies nothing.
The fair way is to withhold judgment (while presuming innocence) when there's a charge against someone but it hasn't been investigated. That's fair whether we're talking about courts or society. Society pronounced its judgment on O.J. after evidence was presented and witnesses testified.
The problem comes when people presume guilt based on a charge alone. Unfortunately, that's often what happens when high-emotion charges are leveled against someone.