The Presumption of Innocence

Fellow Americans,

The liberty and freedom ordinary citizens enjoy today makes America the greatest country on earth.  A tenet of that liberty is our criminal justice system, where every person accused of a crime is presumed innocent until his/her guilt is proven in a court of law.  Without such a presumption of innocence, our society would devolve into chaos and anarchy.  Our Constitution guarantees every citizen due process rights pertaining to court proceedings.  But what if a person accused of a crime is maligned in the press?  Does that person still enjoy the presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion?  Will that person receive unbiased treatment in court?  If that person is proven innocent in court, how does he/she ever get their reputation back?    

A recent example of this sort of media malpractice on a national level is the Derek Chauvin case in Minneapolis in 2020.  Yes, Chauvin was the police officer convicted (wrongly, in my opinion) of murdering George Floyd.  As the nation watched the endless news coverage of the incident day after day and month after month, rioters took to the streets throughout the country and burned, looted, and pillaged.  The most egregious behavior was from the mainstream media, which gleefully fanned the flames of anarchy.  Derek Chauvin was not supposed to get a fair trial and he didn’t.  Sadly, a lot of people were okay with that.

Even local newspapers can get caught up in the rush to judgment.  Consider, for example, a front page “news” article printed in a good old hometown newspaper recently.  The article was about a man accused of molesting a child in 2003.  His mug shot was posted above the article, which gave a brief summary of his charges from the probable cause statement presented to the court.  In my opinion, the article was premature and deprived him of the presumption of innocence by convicting him in the court of public opinion.  I felt the newspaper should have waited to print the article until after the case was decided in a court of law.

Our founders knew all too well the results of a corrupt judicial system.  Let us continue what they started and maintain the presumption of innocence for everyone.  It’s as simple as the Golden Rule.  May God bless you, President Trump, and the United States of America!

Dan Landi

Kidder, MO