Evidence Should Decide Cases

Before I start talking, I have several friends who were raped or molested when they were younger. Only two of them ever pressed charges, and only one ever got a conviction. I know each of them to be telling the truth, because they gained nothing by lying to me.

So when I say that a trial must have more evidence than testimony, I say so with an understanding of how many people would be denied justice. That it would require women who have been sexually assaulted to think rationally in the most irrational of moments in their life, that it would require children to come forward when events happened, or at least for there to be actual physical damage done to a child for us to see, something that would be incredibly hard to do for many molestation cases. But, the idea that a mere accusation, hurled about, can strip a person of their reputation and freedom with not a single thread of actual evidence should be frightening to us all.

We do not try murder cases if there is no blood or no body. We should not, even though we do, try cases of sexual assault without actual physical damage--via tearing, cuts, or fluids. It is a witch hunt whenever our society says that a human being is guilty because we believe he is guilty, whether or not we can prove it, everyone feels he's guilty. That is what happened here.

Guilt--legal imprisonable guilt--must be, if we wish to survive as a society, a state substatiated by evidence that proves it is more likely than not that the crime a defendant is charged with, was comitted by said defendant. Absent such evidence, no case should be brought, no trial should be had, and no one's reputation should suffer.