>Prove his innocence? In the USA about 40,000 murders are committed each
>year,
You've overstated the number by a factor of 2. It's only about 20K actually
(still a heck of a lot). [btw, The "Organized Crime" page
<http://www.crime.org/>
is a great site to quickly gather info on this kind of stuff.]
>with a liberal interpretation of the word "prove" I might be able to prove I
>didn't commit 75% of them, unfortunately that leaves 10,000 murders I'm
>unable to prove I didn't commit.
If you can't prove that you weren't present for over 10K violent deaths, you
are definitely up to something. Helloooo, Dr. Kevorkian!
"den Otter" <otter@globalxs.nl> wrote:
>Well, don't all (western) justice systems work like that: the prosecution
>builds a case with evidence etc, and it's up to the lawyers to prove that
>this is crap and that in fact you're innocent.
Only in countries with the Napoleonic Code or similar. In England, America,
and
the other Common Law nations, we hold to the "innocent until proven guilty"
standard. Although the system may be abused and stressed at times, that
standard is consistently applied. Note that "prove" means different things in
the US depending on whether the act in question is a felony or not. The
standard
of proof that the prosecution has to meet is much higher for felony cases.
- jeff
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