Are there any legal systems where &quot;guilty until proven innocent&quot; is actually a thing? Related: What different legal-systems are there? The idea of &quot;innocent until proven guilty&quot; is sometimes thrown around as an example of American exceptionalism, but it turns out that this is in fact the standard used in most of the world. There seem to be quite a few countries where there are fewer protections for criminal defendants, but I can't find any where &quot;guilty until proven innocent&quot; is literally the case. What I mean by this is that there are non-US jurisdictions that allow defendants to be convicted on evidence that would be thrown out of a US court as unconstitutionally obtained, but the prosecution still has to present this evidence and use it to convince the court of the defendant's guilt. The court does not simply assume, &quot;The prosecutor said it so it must be true, GUILTY!&quot;. I would define a &quot;guilty until proven innocent&quot; legal regime as incorporating most, if not all, of the following criteria: The contents of an indictment or other formal accusation are presumed true unless specifically rebutted in a court of law. Defendants in court who plead Not Guilty are required to prove their innocence in order to obtain an acquittal. Simply disproving the prosecution's evidence is insufficient for an acquittal unless the defendant also affirmatively proves their innocence. Are there any jurisdictions anywhere in the world where &quot;guilty until proven innocent&quot; is the rule for criminal cases? Just to be clear, I'm not asking for examples of jurisdictions that are not as friendly to defendants (e.g. hearsay is admissible, no doctor-patient privilege, trial by jury not guaranteed, expanded authority of judges to issue search warrants, no right to a &quot;speedy&quot; trial, etc.), but something more approaching, &quot;Oh no, John accused me of breaking into his garage. If I can't affirmatively prove to a jury that I was in America all of last month and couldn't have broken into his garage here in Ruritania, I'm going to prison!&quot;
English defamation law is considered to put the burden of proof on the defendant, and until 2010 English law supported a criminal charge of libel- so called &quot;criminal libel&quot; or &quot;defamatory libel.&quot; It should be noted that criminal libel was never affirmatively enshrined in English law, but it came about as an outgrowth of English common law. It was never heavily prosecuted, but was a crime and did carry a potential sentence of one to two years in jail. A comprehensive review of criminal libel in English law was published as &quot;Working Paper No. 84 Criminal Libel&quot;. You can read it here. In England, when actions for libel are brought, the defamatory statements are assumed to be false. This assumes the defendant/publisher to be in the wrong, and they must demonstrate their actions to be reasonable. At the time, the defenses available (see paragraph 3.17 in linked reference) to the defendant/publisher were either: Assert that the statements are not actually defamatory, or do not constitute libel on other technical grounds (e.g. were not actually published in a fixed medium) Make an affirmative defense of &quot;justification&quot;- proving both that the defamatory statements were actually true AND that that there is a public interest in publishing the statements. Make an affirmative defense of &quot;fair comment&quot;- similar to justification but for statements that are a matter of opinion rather than a matter of objective fact. This satisfies your first condition- the statements named by the plaintiff/prosecutor are assumed to be false and defamatory (note another peculiarity of English common law was that actions of libel could be brought by a prosecutor but could also be brought by private citizens... even if they weren't the ones being libeled). This means the prosecutor was assumed to be in the right, and the defendant was assumed to be in the wrong. Paragraph 3.19 in the linked document lays it out for us: The onus of proving the truth of the statement lies on the defendant who must also prove the facts by reason of which it was for the public benefit for the statement to be published. Accordingly, the person defamed need give no evidence to rebut the allegations made in the plea of justification, leaving the defendant to prove that the libel was true and that the publication was for the public benefit. Note that this is a departure from most other western legal systems in two ways. In the US we say that &quot;Truth is an absolute defense against libel claims.&quot; If the statement is true, then you can say it under US law, no matter how badly it damages someone's reputation. Note that this is not true for common law criminal libel- merely being true is not sufficient defense, the statements must both be true AND there must be a public interest in publishing the statements. Thus a newspaper or gossip rag that published lovers' intimate details could be prosecuted for criminal libel even if those details are true. Truth is not an absolute defense. At this point we have also satisfied your second condition. Once an action of libel has successfully been brought, the defendant must assert some defense or else they automatically lose. Either they must contend that the alleged defamatory statements don't technically rise to the level of libel under the law, or they must prove the truth of their statements and provide a compelling public interest in making those statements. Other legal systems handle libel very differently. In the USA, libel laws vary on a state-by-state basis. In general however, a plaintiff wanting to bring suit for libel must provide evidence that the libelous statements are in fact false. If they cannot provide some evidence to that effect, there is no prima facie case of libel and the defense could move for a summary judgement. As has already been said, truth is an absolute defense in the USA. While the crime of libel no longer exists in England, all of this carries over into modern-day civil libel actions. The onus is still on the defendant to prove their innocence. Modern observers have coined the terms &quot;libel tourism&quot; and &quot;libel terrorism&quot; to refer to the practice of attacking critics in English courts rather than more appropriate venues specifically because of the fewer protections afforded to defendants there. The US in particular passed the SPEECH Act in 2010, saying that findings of libel from foreign courts are unenforceable in the US, largely due English libel tourism.
Here are the jury instructions. These describe how to evaluate witness testimony, burdens of proof, and the four-factor fair use test, among other things. The jury had to answer yes or no to the following question: Has Google shown by a preponderance of the evidence that its use in Android of the declaring lines of code and their structure, sequence, and organization from Java 2 Standard Edition 1.4 and Java 2 Standard Edition Version 5.0 constitutes a "fair use" under the Copyright Act? They answered yes. Juries do not explain their reasoning (different jurors might even have different reasonings), but the assumption is that they followed the jury instructions to arrive at this conclusion. To be clear, the issue wasn't reimplementation of 37 Java APIs, but a more limited taking, including "the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization".
The eighth amendment, by prohibiting excessive bail, implies that pretrial detention is constitutional in at least some circumstances: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. Some may be surprised to learn that this was not at all innovative. There is a virtually identical clause in the English Bill of Rights, a century earlier: That excessive Baile ought not to be required nor excessive Fines imposed nor cruell and unusuall Punishments inflicted. From this it should be clear that pretrial detention was already widely accepted as necessary in some cases (in fact, it was the norm for centuries), so it is unlikely that anyone thought that the constitution or bill of rights had sought to abolish it. The assertion that pretrial detention is illegal as a means of punishment follows directly from two principles, namely: That the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. It is not appropriate to punish someone whose guilt has not been proven. That the purpose of pretrial detention, in keeping with the presumption of innocence, is not to punish. Rather, it is primarily intended to secure the presence of the accused at trial and to prevent the person from committing more crimes. Wikipedia has more information at its articles on bail and the eighth amendment's excessive bail clause. Consequently, there is unlikely to be any case in which the constitutionality of pretrial detention, generally, is at issue. Rather, you will find cases in which particular elements of an individual's pretrial detention are alleged to violate some constitutional right, which, in addition to the protections already mentioned, includes the right to a speedy trial.
First, while Law and Order should not be taken as an accurate depiction of a New York trial, it especially should not be taken as an accurate depiction of an Australian trial. Australian law, while it has some major similarities with US law (both ultimately derive from the law of England), is not US law. With procedural matters (such as "may jurors ask questions of witnesses"), it can potentially differ from court to court. In general, jurors may not simply ask a witness a question. The jury's job is not to investigate and figure out if the defendant was guilty or not; it's to evaluate the cases presented by each side. US (and Australian, as far as I know) courts use what's known as the adversarial model, where the prosecution and the defense both present the best cases they can and a neutral third party decides which case was stronger. In a US criminal trial, the state is expected to justify why someone should be in jail; the jury shouldn't be helping them justify it. This isn't how all jurisdictions around the world work, but it's how the US does. One concern with juror questions is that it has the risk that the juror will not be impartial. Jurors are not supposed to get into arguments with witnesses, or to go after them to try to prove a point. In your case, the juror might be introducing an entirely different line of reasoning from the one either side is presenting, and that's simply not their job. People have raised the concern that a juror thinking up questions might be deciding the case before they hear all the evidence, and might give too much weight to the answers to their own questions (or read a lot into it if a question is denied). There are also rules on what questions may be legally asked; lawyers know these and jurors generally don't, which is why jurors may almost never directly ask a question to a witness. Where they can ask questions, it's virtually always written questions, which the judge reviews, gives to both sides to see if anyone objects, and then reads to the witness in a neutral tone.
There may be two questions sort of embedded in here: How long does the government have before it violates Speedy Trial; and How long does the government have to turn over its evidence? Unfortunately, they're probably both impossible to answer at this point. Question 1 Under the Speedy Trial Act (18 USC 3161): In any case in which a plea of not guilty is entered, the trial of a defendant charged in an information or indictment with the commission of an offense shall commence within seventy days from the filing date (and making public) of the information or indictment, or from the date the defendant has appeared before a judicial officer of the court in which such charge is pending, whichever date last occurs. If a defendant consents in writing to be tried before a magistrate judge on a complaint, the trial shall commence within seventy days from the date of such consent. IRA was indicted on February 16, 2018, so 70 days later would be April 27, 2018, which has obviously already come and gone. But their initial appearance wasn't until May 9, 2018, which pushes the time back to July 18, 2018. That would be the default latest date for a trial to begin, but the Act also allows delays for a variety of factors. Among them are delays "resulting from other proceedings concerning the defendant," which includes time the court spends considering the defendants' motions. So if IRA moves to dismiss the case, all the time spent fighting over that motion would "toll" speedy-trial time, meaning that it would stop the clock until the motion was decided. Another provision of potential relevance is 18 USC 3161(h)(8): Any period of delay, not to exceed one year ... [if] an official request .. has been made for evidence of any such offense and that it reasonably appears, or reasonably appeared at the time the request was made, that such evidence is, or was, in such foreign country. So if there's evidence somewhere in Russia linking these guys to the crimes they're accused of, that might push speedy trial back by a year just to deal with that issue alone. So the short answer to Question 1 is that Speedy Trial requires the trial to begin on July 18, but that practically speaking, that probably won't happen. Question 2 The timing of discovery, the process of each side turning over its evidence to the other side, varies based on the kind of evidence involved, so there are usually multiple disclosures of evidence between the time of indictment and the actual trial. Under current DOJ guidelines, prosecutors are encouraged to provide "broad and early discovery." More specifically: Exculpatory evidence available under Brady v. Maryland should be turned over "reasonably promptly"; Impeachment evidence available under Giglio v. United States should be turned over "at a reasonable time before trial to allow the trial to proceed efficiently"; and Material available under Rule 16 should be disclosed "as soon as is reasonably practical." As you can see, these aren't really hard deadlines. The defense will ask for the documents, the government will turn over documents, and then they'll probably both fight about turning over some other documents, and then they'll wait for the court to decide what to do. So when does Mueller have to turn over his evidence? Probably the best answer we have right now is: "When a judge tells him to."
I don't believe your premise is necessarily true. As the Supreme Court has held, a defendant can be prosecuted for perjury after being convicted for another offense at trial: The conviction of Williams, at a former trial, for beating certain victims is not former or double jeopardy. Obviously perjury at a former trial is not the same offense as the substantive offense, under 18 U.S.C. § 242, of depriving a person of constitutional rights under color of law. . . . It would be no service to the administration of justice to enlarge the conception of former jeopardy to afford a defendant immunity from prosecution for perjury while giving testimony in his own defense. United States v. Williams, 341 U.S. 58, 62 (1951) (emphasis added). Now as a practical matter, trying a convicted person for perjury is most likely rare, since the prosecutor has already obtained a conviction for the underlying offense. Starting another prosecution for perjury might be excessive or unnecessary. But that doesn't mean it's categorically prohibited. Note also that perjury by the defendant can be considered by the judge to enhance the defendant's sentence. United States v. Dunnigan, 507 U.S. 87, 96 (1993).
Yes, such a scenario is plausible, and there are some cases where it has probably happened. But since juries do not normally give reasons for their votes, it is hard to establish when it has and when it has not happened, and I have seen no statistics on such occurrences. By the way, &quot;Jury Nullification&quot; is simply when one or more jury members vote in a particular way because of something other than the law and evidence as presented in the trial. Most often the term is used when a jury votes to acquit because they dislike or disapprove of the law involved. For example, in the 1850s a number of people accused of violating the US Fugitive Slave Law by harboring runaway slaves were acquitted, reputedly because juries who disliked the law (quite unpopular in many northern states) no matter what the evidence. Later, during Prohibition, some people charged with possessing or selling alcohol were acquitted, reputedly by juries who disapproved of Prohibition. In both cases, it is hard to get authoritative sources that specific cases were actual instances of jury nullification. Anyway, a juror need not &quot;ask&quot; for jury nullification, that juror just votes to acquit. A jury that votes to acquit (or convict) because of political or personal views about the accused might be said to be &quot;biased&quot; but I am not sure if that would be described as &quot;jury nullification&quot;.
The title question is overly-ambitious: it is not guaranteed, and nobody thinks that it is. The law does what is practical to achieve the desired result. Actual failure one way or the other is mostly irrelevant until a clear pattern to the failure is found, then there might be a legal resolution, but it might also require a political resolution. One consideration is whether it is possible for a defendant to receive a fair trial in a certain jurisdiction. Generally, you are tried in the jurisdiction where the offense occurred, sometimes (rarely) the venue can be changed to a more neutral location. This consideration is significant in high-profile cases. For example, the trials of Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad took place relatively far away from the scene of the crime. The trial judge must weigh the arguments for an inconvenient trial location, and in this trial the judge refused a petition for a change of venue. The judge stated that &quot;As far as change of venue, I do not think that that would give the defendant any kind of a fair trial beyond what we are doing here today. I don’t think there’s any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case&quot; A second layer of protection is that prospective jurors may be excused. If a juror declares in advance (during voir dire or elsewhere) that the defendant is guilty, they will be excused for cause. The defense (or prosecution) also has some number of peremptory challenges – in this case, the defense has 5 and the prosecution has 3. In this category, a seated juror can be excused for cause (this happened), when a juror admits that some news e.g. about the city's settlement had prejudiced the juror. Also related to juror selection is that juror must swear to follow the law in reaching a decision. The third layer of protection is limiting testimony, for instance if the prosecution were to ask a witness something like &quot;Won't there be major riots if Chauvin isn't convicted?&quot;, the defense would presumably object and prevent such testimony from getting uttered in the first place, or getting officially stricken if it somehow gets out. The fourth layer of protection is that jurors are meticulously instructed as to the logic of decision-making. If you can find a copy, there are here (MN does not make the instructions freely publicly available). Here are the California instructions. Additionally, a judge might attempt to limit what can be said by the media, or might sequester the jury so that they cannot hear any such publicity during the trial (but that's impossible for pre-trial publicity). Another layer is that a mistrial can be declared. However, what goes on in the jury room is in a black box that the legal system cannot generally touch. If a juror was paid off, that could be touched by the legal system, but there is nothing that can be done if it turns out that a juror has a bias in favor of the prosecution, despite the premise of neutrality. Finally, if the facts are so clear, a judge might overturn a conviction on the grounds that a reasonable jury could not reach that conclusion, based on the facts and the law. By &quot;final&quot; I ignore the possibility of an appeal.