In Chatlogs, Celebrated Hacker and Activist Confesses Countless Sexual Assaults
theverge.com
theverge.com
That's a really ridiculous standard, for a few reasons:
- The standard of proof in a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is a very high bar to meet. (FWIW, I think it meets it in this case). We made it that high because we would rather a guilty person walk free than put an innocent person in jail. The costs of you and I incorrectly choosing not to associate with someone are far lower. There are other standards for guilt in other cases, such as "more probable than not" in civil trials.
- A prosecutor may believe a crime has occurred but decline to bring a case for a number of reasons (limited budget, jurisdiction, statute of limitations, difficulty or unreliability of evidence, because they think they don't have a good chance to win)
- We make decisions all the time about who we'll partner with, who we hire, who we fire, based on standards far lower than this. In general it's not a crime to be an asshole but you'd never say I should wait until it's proven in court before deciding not to hire one.
There's more than enough evidence about this person specifically, and in most cases, for me/you to feel fine never associating with this person, or working with an organization he's involved with, ever again, even if a court of law never gets involved.
That's in effect more like jail time than like some individuals shunning him.
There are plenty of careers I'm more worried about than his, starting with those of his victims, and probably continuing to those who could have been famous hackers were it not for the accidents of their birth.
The right about trials is about a fair trial by the government, and is a check on the government's power to punish.
If you are using the word "lynch mob" in a rhetorical way to refer to people who are not depriving you of life, liberty, or property, arguments about actual lynch mobs do not apply. A so-called "lynch mob" that merely has opinions about you and does not do anything to you is not unjust any more than a high school mock trial club is unjust. A so-called "lynch mob" that has opinions about you and goes on to do entirely legal things, like exert their free speech rights to publish their opinions about you, is not unjust, either.
historical data support my claim as wikipedia points: "Public humiliation is the dishonoring showcase of a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of punishment in former times, and is still practiced by different means in the modern era."
Also note that published stories like these are a vastly different ballgame than the usual person-to-person type of gossip that affects partnering and hiring choices.
Perhaps "convicted in court" is a too high of bar to you, but given the fact that people do lie about being sexually assaulted, perhaps the bar of "being accused means you did it" is a bit too low.
Ultimately it's up to each individual to decide the proper position of their bar, and perhaps this guy did indeed do it (personally, I don't care)... but the current trend of taking the accusers word as an actionable truth is troubling.
You might want to elaborate on this - it sounds like you don't care even if you think someone is a rapist, but I hope that's not your position? That's a really low bar.
Not least of all, written admission of crime by the accused himself, in addition to corroboration of several incidents of assault by the news outlet. How is the question of innocence is still being bandied when the accused has already admitted his guilt?!! Equally absurd are the futile attempts to foist standards of criminal courts on that of public opinion despite the significant differences between both systems that you noted.
To assume that guilt beyond any reasonable doubt as an absolute, scientific and completely infallible standard demonstrates an unfamiliarity with the legal system. The system may be flawed and cases may or may prosecuted for the reasons that were mentioned but many of those reasons like available resources have little if anything to do with the standard of proof that must be brought to trial.
Individuals can be prosecuted on very paltry evidence and even convicted if reasonable people find that evidence to be sufficient.
To believe that any lower standard of proof is needed to prosecute individuals is to pander to mob mentality that just because most people want to find someone guilty means we should find them guilty.
This burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt is set in place precisely to avoid such legal lynching proceedings
It's still not the same standard as the one society needs. The state wields a big hammer, and such it has relatively high standards. Us, individual society members, wield a tiny mallet, and as such we should feel more free to wield that than the state does. As the gp notes, we already do in many cases.
The courts should really be the last resort for this stuff; society should be dealing with it cleanly before it ever gets there.
Your argument about individual members of society however is, with respect, flawed. The masses of society, when all working towards a common goal are not tiny droplets in the pond but indeed the mighty torrent that can sweep away even so powerful an entity as the state. To advocate for a lower standard of evidence based on the fact that "everyone knows he is guilty" is, as mentioned, to advocate for a trial system based on mob mentality. Furthermore, public opinion can can be easily swayed by what is reported to it and I will spare this thread the question of the media or powerful individuals like Trump or Russia or Clinton etc using the media to subvert public opinion.
The system again may not be perfect but it is there to protect not only from the might of the state but also from the dictatorship of the masses which may, unlike the court system, have their own reasons for convicting someone, reasons which may not even have anything to do with the actual matter. This is even more problematic as the court system is at least subject to review and appeal whereas the masses have absolutely no check on them.
(My understanding is that this is basically why you sometimes see contracts banning illegal behavior. It's hard to prove illegal behavior to the extent required to throw you in prison, and that's a good thing, but it's easier to find you in breach of contract.)
This is all well and good until you are on the wrong side of that equation.
We nominally prioritize "protecting the innocent" over "punishing the guilty". There are VERY good reasons why we set things up this way.
You want the wheels of justice to grind accurately.
#metoo isn't just for the entertainment industry.
Solve what? The question of whether he should be imprisoned or face other legal penalties, yes. But it's a mistake to conflate that with dealings with Marquis-Boire in general.