That’s a widely shared objective right now, but at what price? In New Zealand, one of the two main political parties, Labour, is now contemplating rolling back the presumption of innocence, while the other, incumbent National, is contemplating allowing the criminal process to infer guilt from silence. [New Zealand Herald, more]
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What you’ve got to realize is that jailing men is now a virtue in itself.
Wouldn’t it be simpler to dispense with the trial and go straight to the punishment?
Guess they’ve never heard of Randy Mills.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Tennessee_Man_Exonerated_of_Rape_after_Serving_11_Years.php
or, don’t care, if they have heard.
Unfortunately, neither New Zealand Herald article discusses the political etiology of this Tweedledum and Tweedledee battle.
But it reeks the distinct aroma of the misandrist “patriarchal war on women” political rhetoric that we in the USA have experienced from soi disant “feminists” for decades.
“We’re convicting 100% of the guilty and none of the innocent.”
“We gotta get the conviction rate up!”
Something that’s often overlooked in the discussion of sexual assault in the military is that Congress already tried this. Look at the 2008 amendments to the Uniform Code of Military Justice that included an unconstitutional burden shift to the defense to prove the victim was not substantially incapacitated…Here’s the NIMJBlog-CAAFLOG discussion of the issue: http://www.caaflog.com/2008/12/28/top-10-military-justice-stories-of-2008-6-a-military-judge-rules-that-the-new-article-120-is-unconstitutional/