Due Process: Innocent Before Proven Guilty

The fifth amendment states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

We didn’t always have this concept of due process. History is filled with different forms of government oppressing citizens with unfair convictions.

A king could deem anyone guilty of a crime without trial and evidence. The defendant had no chance of defending himself in front of their peers. The king’s words were the law of the land, and many innocent people suffered because of this concept.

An oppressive religious ruling class had power as well. Take a look at the Salem Witch Trials. Religious fervor and group think could have disastrous consequences where people are deemed guilty through accusations alone.

Instead of a fair trial, they would test the innocence of the accused with a technique called ordeal by water.

As part of the infamous “swimming test,” accused witches were dragged to the nearest body of water, stripped to their undergarments, bound and then tossed in to to see if they would sink or float. Since witches were believed to have spurned the sacrament of baptism, it was thought that the water would reject their body and prevent them from submerging. According to this logic, an innocent person would sink like a stone, but a witch would simply bob on the surface. The victim typically had a rope tied around their waist so they could be pulled from the water if they sank, but it wasn’t unusual for accidental drowning deaths to occur.

Witch swimming derived from the “trial by water,” an ancient practice where suspected criminals and sorcerers were thrown into rushing rivers to allow a higher power to decide their fate. This custom was banned in many European counties in the Middle Ages, only to reemerge in the 17th century as a witch experiment, and it persisted in some locales well into the 18th century. For example, in 1710, the swimming test was used as evidence against a Hungarian woman named Dorko Boda, who was later beaten and burned at the stake as a witch.

It wasn’t always the government that oppressed the people either; there was also the looming threat of a tyranny of the majority. When a group of people is convinced that their ways are good and all else are evil, they can exert a powerful social pressure onto individuals, which usually intimidates them and bullies them into silence.

They are either bullied into meekly joining the mob and pretend to follow them, or be excommunicated from society and be seen as an outcast/traitor/bad person for wanting to keep your liberties.

You can only practice your individualism… if it aligns with the ideology’s narrative of life. Don’t step out of line now, or you’ll join the others.

So by analyzing history and studying human behavior, you can understand why due process of law is such a big deal and why it must be maintained in all cases.

Even if the odds are stacked against you, even if all the evidence is pointed toward you and it is 99% certain that you are the perpetrator, due process allows for that 1% on the off chance that you were simply in an unfortunate, unforeseeable spot.

If we revert the process of maintaining justice back to “he said, she said” and are to believe every accusation as truth, our society will fall into chaos. We’ve gone through this in the past with McCarthyism, at the height of the Red Scare.

Could we be in the midst of one right now? Don’t get me wrong, #metoo has brought the hammer down on those who deserve it, and I’m glad that people were empowered to speak up and risk public backlash, but in the crossfire innocent lives were heavily damaged, if not ruined.

With due process, we can minimize the number of bystanders who are wrongfully accused and prevent unnecessary casualties. We don’t need to perpetuate a callout culture that seems to be hurting more people than helping them. People of different identities are scared to interact with each other because of this looming threat. Instead of bringing people together in attempts to bring justice to the corrupt, it has segregated people and pitted them against each other.

Is everyone who is called racist, homophobic, sexist, misogynist, xenophobic actually what we think they are?

Maybe, just maybe… but I’d like to see the evidence for myself and judge accordingly based on the original context and situation. I highly doubt that everyone who is accused of being one of those names is going out of their way to be the “evil person” that they are depicted as.

I also understand that the system fails us from time to time because of human misjudgment, mistakes and corruption. It is a flawed system, because it was created by ever-so-flawed humans. But it’s the best we’ve got, and it’s been working for a long time — producing great results more often than not.

I don’t want to live in a society where every accusation is to be taken as gospel. I want justice to be served, but it shouldn’t be decreed upon individuals by the tyranny of the majority.

We don’t need to jump to conclusions. We don’t need to make immediate judgment of character and tarnish reputations.

Wrongly accused people suffer deep consequences. They must pick up their shards of their broken images for the rest of their lives. They are thrust into the public light and they are persecuted from all angles.

If the trial ends and they are not found guilty, they cannot ever hope to convince people who stubbornly choose to believe that they are guilty. These people have made up their minds, and will perpetually judge them accordingly.

We are so quick to jump to conclusions about people based on our initial observations and on the information we are told by those around us. If we can follow the due process of law for every incident, we can surely look at the evidence together and find common ground.

We can work together and find out the truth. We all want justice to be served, but we must cooperate in the process of how we attain it.