Nobody said anything about doing away with the presumption of innocence......except perhaps you in your zeal to protect false accusers. Continuing to protect false accusers absolutely curtails the presumption of innocence for the falsely accused. It’s completely lopsided and half-baked. The falsely accused stand to lose everything they have, including their reputation and ability to make a living in the future as well as having to sell and/or mortgage everything they own to pay for a vigorous defense. What if they’re 60 years old and it’s too late for them to start over and make all that back again? And you’re suggesting someone who leaves this destruction in their wake be given a pass because we, the people, are too stupid to sort out what the law should be and when and how it should be enforced?
Why don’t we just do away with all criminal codes out of fear of “putting the legal system squarely under someone’s subjective thumb” or someone’s interpretation that criminal statutes are not clearly defined?
As for writing the law, I would define the crime in the exact legal terms needed as making an accusation to a law enforcement officer, including the prosecuting attorney of a district, a specific criminal act that did not occur. There should be more than one section, including misdemeanor status for a general false report (”I was robbed” when, in fact, no such robbery happened at all), felony staus when it’s done for financial reasons, e.g. insurance scams, and felony status WITH SERIOUS ENHANCEMENT when the perpetrator escalates the charge by identifying a particular suspect (”Joe Dokes, who works at Burger King on Main St., robbed me”) or from a photo array. This definition alone completely eliminates the problem of misidentification from the equation because the crime is defined as false accusation, not misidentification. If somebody really is raped or robbed and misidentifies the perpetrator from a photo array or thinks maybe it was the pizza delivery guy who came to their house three nights earlier that week (”The guy who robbed/raped me kind of looked like the guy who delivered our pizza last Tuesday night”), this hypothetical statute would never come into play at all.
There are already laws against falsely reporting a crime, but the punishment is very weak. They are low-level misdemeanors. If a falsely reported crime gets beyond the investigation phase and a suspect is named by the “victim”, there should be a severe penalty reflecting serious felony status. If the “suspect” is actually arrested before it’s discovered that it’s a false report and accusation, the “victim” should serve the maximum penalty attached to the crime charged against the “suspect.”
We take financial crimes very seriously in this country and manage to throw the the book at people who crookedly or corruptly impoverish their victims. We need to take the desecration of someone’s reputation, freedom, pursuit of happiness and threat of financial ruination through legal fees just as seriously as we do corrupt financial practices.
It ain’t rocket science.
Now you’re just acting stupid.
My point is that the legal definition of such an aggravated false accusation is not easily defined using English. Your faith in the ability of politicians to excel in the English language is astounding - and incredibly naive. As an example of my point, I cited the famous instance where a judge, in trying to define “pornography” said “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it”.
The judicial system is very broken, including the power of corrupt or politically motivated indictments of “ham sandwiches” such as Tom Delay in Texas. And yet you feel it is very easy to write a clear and unambiguous law that cannot be used to feather some political DA’s nest, building a career by breaking people he or she finds convenient.
If you don’t believe that happens, you are hopeless.
The sad part is we actually agree on the need for the law - but you disagree that the law needs to err on the side of caution because lawmakers and law enforcers aren’t perfect. In your world, they must be.
How unimaginatively naive.
You are welcome to the last word. I’ll not reply again. In my judgment, there is no use in trying to explain these few facts to you.
Anyone with an open mind knew precious was lying within 2 weeks of her allegations. But, it was bigger than precious. It was about politics, race and gender. Everyone had a chance to bite the apple, even the drag queen.
Women do not lie about rape. Ask Nancy Grace and Georgia what's her name. A sex worker (mother, student, dancer) can be raped by a bunch of swaggering lacrosse players. I know because the N&O told me so. /s
A coach was fired. A lacrosse season canceled. Students were suspended after being hung out to dry by a university that valued being on the 'right' side of race and gender issues more than the future of three students who were being FRAMED by the entire system. An honest cop was targeted because he told the truth. Ed Bradley was vilified. Three young men faced 20 years in state prison because one DA pimped one skanky whore to an eager city.
No one had enough sense or courage to ask the $64,000,000 question: Why in the world would they even want to touch a skanky exotic dancer/ho with a tampon string hanging between her legs. There ain't enough beer in the world. And yet while Bernie Madoff will leave prison only for his grave, Nifong got one day in jail and precious wrote a book.