Not guilty does not mean we know you are innocent. Not guilty means the prosecution has not proven guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

There have been trials where jury members have stated after the case that they believe a defendant committed the crime they were accused of, but the prosecution did not do a good enough job of overcoming the definition of reasonable doubt. Therefore they had to find not guilty (Tobias is right...they do not say you are innocent).

There have also been cases where a defendant was found guilty, but the verdict was overturned on appeal because of mishandling or misrepresentation of evidence during the case. This can happen on a judge’s ruling and have nothing to do with a jury hearing the facts of a case. In neither one of these instances is the defendant innocent. But because of legal definitions they cannot be found guilty.

This also goes into why we have civil and criminal courts in our system. Civil courts do not have the same stringent requirements as criminal courts do. This is why a certain white bronco driving ex-NFL player was found not guilty in a legal trial, but in a civil trial was forced to pay millions in compensatory and punitive damages to the suvivors of two murder victims.

I was on such a jury. This guy beat the holy hell out of this other guy, but we did not award damages because they couldn't PROVE it...not beyond a reasonable doubt. Out system protect the innocent, and yes, it does allow guilty people to skate sometimes, but should anyone here ever be falsely accused (see falconhater) they'll be damned happy they're in an American court and not a Turkish one.

... don't believe the hype.

... and speaking of Turkish courts, personally, I've never been to one , and while it may be true that if you are accused of something you'd be damned happy you'd be tried in a US court, when someone does you wrong, and you are accusing someone who did something to you but somehow he gets off the hook on a technicality, then the Turkish court don't sound so bad

I was on such a jury. This guy beat the holy hell out of this other guy, but we did not award damages because they couldn't PROVE it...not beyond a reasonable doubt. Out system protect the innocent, and yes, it does allow guilty people to skate sometimes, but should anyone here ever be falsely accused (see falconhater) they'll be damned happy they're in an American court and not a Turkish one.

the system works.....it has worked for years and thats why whenever there is a change, people make a big deal about it

now criminals who are serving life sentences can get out early.....the death penalty is being harrassed.....and even laws are being bent to persuade a judge/jury that a person is guilty until proven innocent

the fact is that there are very few instances where the guilty man walks free and the overwhelming majority of cases are correct because our judicial system is set up so perfectly

as this applies to this case......it doesnt matter what ben did or if he did anything because there wasnt any proof....so the blame falls back on the women who alleged the crime

even if ben made unwanted advances....he is innocent of the crime of rape

now criminals who are serving life sentences can get out early.....the death penalty is being harrassed.....and even laws are being bent to persuade a judge/jury that a person is guilty until proven innocent

the fact is that there are very few instances where the guilty man walks free and the overwhelming majority of cases are correct because our judicial system is set up so perfectly

as this applies to this case......it doesnt matter what ben did or if he did anything because there wasnt any proof....so the blame falls back on the women who alleged the crime

even if ben made unwanted advances....he is innocent of the crime of rape

What are you trying to say with this statement? It seems to contradict itself. The first two points indicate laws are getting less stringent by eliminating the DP and reducing sentences. Yet the third statement would mean they are getting tougher by "persuading" juries to prosecute innocent people. What is your point and what does it have to do with this?



First of all you have no idea the factuality of this statement. Go to your local jail and ask how many inmates in there are innocent. I bet it's a pretty high number. If 5 percent of them are telling the truth, then it can add up to a lot of people. I'm not saying any system is better than ours, but to say definitely that someone did or did not commit a crime even based on the outcome of a jury trial (or even worse a judge trial) is blind. Our own system realized this when they put in the appeal process. It allows for the chance to review a verdict because so very often it is wrong.

Second of all we aren't talking about a situation where a person was found Not Guilty. No trial was had due to a lack of evidence. So it is his word against hers. Not enough for a prosecuting DA to waste his/her resources on. This is very similar to the thousands of robberies, muggings, car thefts, and yes rapes that happen every day in this county and go unsolved or unreported. Unsolved crimes happen all the time in our perfectly set up judicial system. I guess you are fortunate enough to never have been a victim of a crime and experienced this first hand. But I would bet there are far more crimes committed in this country that go unpunished than cases where the legal system gets it right from arrest to prosecution to sentencing.



Blame falls back on the woman? What blame?



Of course he is, because the legal system always gets it right and the bad guys always get what's coming to them

I'm not saying that he did assault the girl because I wasn't there. But I'm guessing you weren't either. So you saying he positively did not assault her because the DA decided that there wasn't enough to charge him on is a total guess on your part even if you don't want to admit it. Tell me this, if nothing happened as you claim, then why didn't the police file charges against her for filing a false police report?

Well then allow me to ask you this: Of the total number of people that have been convicted of a crime and are in jail and otherwise alive, how many of them are innocent? You cannot make the "Very often it is wrong" claim any more than Canton can make the very often it is right claim.

In fact, Canton, based on the number of overturned convictions related to those that aren't, is in a much better place to make his assertion than you are yours.

The TRUTH (and any number you find will back this up) is that the majority of people in jail are rightfully there. Our system works, which is not to say it doesn't make mistakes, and Ben's situation if proof of the former, not the latter.

Ben is innocent because there is insufficient evidence to show otherwise. INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY BY THE GRACE OF GOD! The prosecutor is aware of this. Why aren't you?

Really? Well, I am no lawyer, but a quick google lookup found this:

Law.com Charts: State by State Comparison

and this:

68 Percent Error Rate Found in Death Case Study

Now I did not write these so there may be some falsehood to them, but I feel confident in saying that a court decision being overturned on appeal is hardly a rare occurrence. Again, this is why they have an appeal process in the first place; they new they would be needed because screw-ups would happen. If you add into this the number of people let free because of DNA evidence after the fact (There have been 252 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States since 1989), I feel “so often wrong" is a fair assessment. When we are talking about the seriousness of being on trial, a 1 % rate of error or overturn on appeal should be considered too high IMO. I’m guessing you would too if you were on trial yourself or seeking the conviction of the person that raped your mother/sister/daughter.




I'd agree that the majority of the people in jail are guilty of a crime. But my point was more about the people that commit crimes and do not go to jail either because 1) they were not caught or 2) they were caught by could not be proven guilty. Disagree if you want, but I'm not naive enough to believe that just because a person isn't brought to trial for a crime, it means they 100% for sure did not commit the crime. No person was found guilty or ever tried for the murder of JonBenét Patricia Ramsey. That sure doesn't mean no crime was committed. Ben’s situation proves nothing. All we can do is speculate.



Because I keep my eyes open I guess. And so does the prosecutor. Ben was not charged for the crime of sexual assault in the eyes of the law. That is not the same as innocent. If it was, then the police would not have made that snide comment about prosecuting morals. They would have said, “We are convinced that Mr. Roethlisberger was guilty of no wrongdoing and we are happy to completely clear him of all charges. We are contemplating legal action against the woman who has falsely accused him”. But no, that didn’t happen. Who knows how he will be tried by the EYES OF GOD?

I'll go back to my previous example because it fits, people are aware of it, and it is easy. OJ was found not guilty of the murders. Yet strangely enough the LAPD (and the prosecutor whom you mention above) did not say "Gee, that guy was found not guilty. We must have had the wrong guy after all. We'd better go out and catch the real killer." Why not, because they felt they had the right guy to begin with. Because he wasn't found guilty, should they have re-opened the investigation following other leads? Of course not. It would have been a waste of time and money. Our perfect system had another glitch.

So to sum up you are obviously going to believe what you want to. But I believe there are enough mistakes in our legal system, both against the innocent and for the guilty, that it is foolhardy to blindly believe someone's guilt because one lawyer was more persuasive in court than another or someone's innocence because a DA realizes it is a waste of taxpayers money to pursue a case he cannot win against the kind of high dollar legal team that Roth. would buy.