there's something sick about continually pushing the public to judge guilt or innocence

[G_j]

the media does it constantly. Polling people if they think someone is guilty or innocent of a crime. With OJ it was what per cent of black people think he was guilty, compared to whites, and on and on.

Sure, it is human nature to guess about such things. A lot of people have OPINIONS. But none of those people is on the jury.
I'm uncomfortable about prompting people to make judgments when they don't have the knowledge needed to do so.
I reserve my right to attend to things I know about.

:rant:

(edit: If it's not obvious, this was inspired by the back and forth about MJ,
though what I refer to as 'sick', is the media's behavior in insisting on asking people stupid questions)

[scarletwoman]

1. It's the Roman Colisseum thing -- thumbs up or thumbs down.

Keeps the masses entertained and distracted while the Rulers do their thing.

[BlooInBloo]

2. And especially with black folks as the target of the question, it's a great White Unity tool.

[Life Long Dem]

3. Yeah...

I loved all the facts on Saddam.

[obliviously]

4. I am tired of it to! N/T

[Mojambo]

5. When the accused buys his way out before it can even get to a jury

This kind of "judging" is all we have left.

[WeDidIt]

6. You're as free to hold this opinion as I am to believe MJ was guilty

Dontcha love a free society?

:rant:

[G_j]

7. I may have some sort of opinion about that too,

but I'm personally not qualified to judge. Therefore, I choose not to speculate about some things.
You, or anyone, is, of course, free to.

[imdjh]

11. The difference is that I have the verdict and you have no reason behind your belief.

[WeDidIt]

16. I only have MJ's admission and the payoff on my side n/t

[iamjoy]

8. I Could Separate It

I can separate thinking some one is guilty - perhaps too easily accepting what the media fed me - but realizing that didn't pass for the kind of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) that would be required for conviction in a court of law.

[Sukie]

9. I read a really insightful piece about how people

who are accused of molestation are doomed to be judged from the moment the accusation takes place, whether guilty or innocent. Saying someone is guilty when they might actually be innocent can ruin a persons life not only outwardly, but inwardly for that person's spirit. The tendency to believe in innocence until enough proof of absolute guilt hurts no one. The accusers and the accused will both see that justice is being sought out. I have always thought that such judgments were a conservative way of thinking but man has DU proved me wrong.

snip

"Everyone has heard the old mantra, “Innocent until proven guilty.” In child molestation cases, though, the truth seems to be something more along the lines of, “Guilty even if proven innocent.” In other words, to simply be accused of child molestation, regardless of whether one is convicted or not by a court of law, is enough to utterly annihilate anyone’s reputation. Why? Because child molestation accusations create clouds of suspicion around the accused that never go away, no matter how much time passes.

This is not an attempt to argue the guilt or innocence of Michael Jackson—that’s not the point. And it’s certainly not to argue that Congress should recognize him as a humanitarian. The point is rather that, regardless of the court’s verdict, many people seem happily convinced that Jackson was, in fact, a pedophile and they don’t mind saying so (Congressman King, for example). What does this say about human nature? Simply this: we have a tendency to believe all the bad things we can about our neighbors, and we enjoy doing so.

In other words, we have a tendency to assume the worst. And our tendency to believe the worst merely increases exponentially when it involves someone who looks and acts as unconventional as did Jackson, with his propensity for blurring racial and gender lines in his personal appearance.



This is not some naïve or gullible attempt to minimize the severity of the allegations that Jackson faced in both 1993 or in 2005. Admittedly, the evidence did seem to be against him. If one wants to be cynical, he could easily say that Jackson was guilty, but his being a multi-millionaire secured that he would never go to jail.



On the flip side, one doesn’t have to be exceptionally cynical to suppose that a family could falsely accuse a billionaire pop star of a crime, hoping to get a slice of the celebrity’s inheritance. After the financial settlement was reached in the early 90s, Jordan Chandler (the boy who had allegedly been molested by Jackson) refused to testify in the criminal proceedings, and so the state ended its criminal investigation citing a lack of evidence. Jackson was never formally charged with a crime. What does this mean? If one wanted to be cynical, he could say that it appears that the child’s family simply wanted Jackson’s money, and once they received the money they were hankering after, they had no further interest in the case.



Obviously, someone was lying—either Jackson, or the boy’s family. The same is, of course, true concerning the 2005 trial. The point is that this writer (and the general public) simply doesn’t know who was lying. So why all the jumping to conclusions? Because human beings like to believe all the bad that we can of other people."

For the rest:

http://www.examiner.com/x-10570-Jackson-Presbyterian-Examiner~y2009m7d8-Speaking-evil-of-no-man-Thoughts-on-the-death-of-Michael-Jackson

[G_j]

12. thank you

I wish I could write as well.
very well said!

[imdjh]

10. It has a certain thumbs-up/thumbs-down feel to it. It's unseemly.

And if adults think that children aren't listening to things that are "over their head" then they are wrong. I very well remember my mother and her friend talking often about the Sam Sheppard murder re-trial in 1966; I thought he must be a friend of the family. I also thought that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were locals, because adults talked about them like they knew them.

[Kerrytravelers]

13. I agree. CourtTV always polls their audience on whether or not someone is guilty.

Viewers can email their thoughts.

What thoughts can a tv viewer possibly have? They're not in the court room. They don't have access to the evidence and the entire trial. What tv shows is just repeated snippets of various testimonies.

I also get so tired of the public obsession with sensational trials. If I were on trial, I'd want a jury of impartial adults who would listen and make a reasonable and just decision, not a pack out to sign a book deal and tv appearances with their new talent agents once the trial is over.

When I think about this overboard nonsense, the McMartin Trials is a perfect example of a witch hunt, complete with pitchforks and burning torches.

[imdjh]

14. And some of those tried in the court of pubic opinion are still in prison.

.... despite the cases being insanely stupid, it spawned an entire year of talk show stupidity and the public seriously believing in "satanic cults" and massive pedophile conspiracies. And if you ask some people out there today, they still believe that the defendants were guilty.

Worse, some of those people are still in prison.

STILL IN PRISON

If the diligent hunt for satanic ritual abusers has come up empty, why are there, by one estimate, over a dozen convicted ritual abusers still in prison? http://members.shaw.ca/imaginarycrimes/othercases.htm

Gerald Amirault is in prison in Massachusetts where his legal battle to overturn his conviction has ground to a halt. His conviction was based on children's testimony collected by the same kinds of interviewing techniques used in the Michaels case. He has asked the governor of Massachusetts for a pardon and a commutation of his sentence to time served, 15 years so far. His mother and sister were also convicted of abuse and released from prison after serving eight years, maintaining their innocence throughout. Violet Amirault, Gerald's mother, died in 1997, hoping to the last that her son would be freed.

Update: Since this article was written, Gerald Amirault has been paroled from prison after serving 18 years. He lives with his wife and children.

Bernard Baran was arrested in 1984 and convicted for allegedly molesting three preschoolers at the day care where he worked. He was only 19 years old. The initial accusation against him came from the parent of a little boy who accused Baran of touching her son. She was a drug addict who periodically lost custody of her child. The other accusations against Baran arose after the other parents learned about the first accusation. The medical evidence against Baran was similar to that brought against Kelly Michaels – that is, it was non-existent. Baran's mother had no money to mount a proper legal defense for him. Baran is still in prison, also in Massachusetts, a victim of prejudice and hysteria. http://www.freebaran.org/.

Update: Since this article was written, Bernard Baran's conviction was overturned in June, 2006 (http://ncrj.org/BaranPR.html) on the grounds that the portions of the interviews with the children were not shown to the jury. The remaining videotapes of the interviews showed that the children denied "Bernie" hurt them until repeatedly prompted. Baran spent 22 years in prison.

Patrick Figured was sentenced to prison for life for allegedly abusing three toddlers at his girlfriend's mother's day care. The allegations against him and his girlfriend, Sonja Hill, were preposterous and included burning bibles and forcing the children to drink blood. Jurors ignored testimony that Figured, an electronics company executive, was never alone with the children and had very little to do with them. The anal "winking" test helped sentence Figured to three life terms. He is currently incarcerated in North Carolina's Nash Correctional Institution. http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_smith.htm

Frances and Dan Keller: If you were accused of burying children alive with animals, painting pictures with bones dipped in blood, digging up and dismembering bodies, torturing animals, running a child brothel and sacrificing infants to Satan, what would you do? Frances and Dan Keller of Austin, Texas, decided to flee to Las Vegas, which didn't help them when they came to trial.

Fran Keller ran a daycare out of their home, complete with a pony in the backyard. She and her husband were accused of sexually assaulting all of the babies and toddlers in their care. The accusations started with one little girl who had been seeing a therapist for behavior problems before she attended the daycare. The Travis County Sheriff's Office investigated. Soon the children were accusing deputy sheriffs of being abusers as well. (Two were charged but the charges were eventually dropped.) Some of the children went to a therapist who believed that Satanic Ritual Abuse was a secret network devised by the CIA and Nazi scientists. Dan Keller's lawyer suggested that the children got their horror stories from the movie Pet Sematary.

In 1992, The Kellers were sentenced to 48 years in prison each and are still in prison today. http://users.rcn.com/kyp/KELLER.HTML

http://www.crimemagazine.com/daycare.htm

[treestar]

15. Agreed. If they did not sit through the evidence like the jury did,

their opinions are useless anyway!