It dies NOT apply to individuals making up their own minds as to what happened and who was responsible for it, and then choosing for themselves how to respond.
So no, he can’t be jailed without a trial. But we can choose to decide what we think happened without waiting for a trial, if we wish.
You may be found to have defamed someone if you go around stating your opinions as facts and the court disagrees that they are facts.
At the most; a prudent judge would likely allow it while the case is still being tried. You'd have to deal with defamation only after the completion of the criminal probe, where a suit could be levied under the auspices of "we were deemed innocent".
IANAL, and this is assuming American court procedure; things may be different in Germany.
For example, what if Alice thinks her employee Bob is dishonest, but he hasn’t been convicted of theft? Can she transfer him to a job that does not involve handling money or procurement?
I think, “yes.” Alice can decide that Bob is not a good fit for a job involving money and trust. Bob might then sue for “constructive dismissal” if the new position is not commensurate with his experience.
The lawyers are the only winners in most such lawsuits, so perhaps Alice settles with Bob. He quits and receives severance.
Bob then applies for a job with Carol. If Alice claims Bob was dishonest, Bob might sue Alice and win substantial damages.
Now what about Carol? What if she questions Bob about Alice’s clams and does not believe his explanation of events? Or if a number of people come forward during the ruckus to tell how they feel Bob was dishonest with them?
“Presumption of Innocence” for Carol would oblige her to hire Bob anyways: It means treating Bob as innocent of the accusations in every way until he is convicted in court.
I claim she has no such obligation. Perhaps it is imprudent of Alice to accuse Bob of dishonesty without being able to prove it, but nevertheless Carol has a right to decide for herself whether she wishes to hire Bob based on her own judgment.
tl;dr:
“Presumption of innocence” is a very strict standard that only applies to the state. People have a right to decide for themselves whether people are innocent or guilty, but just as you say, some actions based on those decisions come with tradeoffs and consequences.
It also serves to avoid ignorant, heated lynch mobs. As with free speech, societal buy-in is a precondition to precluding the government from taking actions.
e.g. murder, there is no doubt that somebody is guilty, but but all suspects benefit from presumption of innocence.
In this specific case, knowing that the crime took place has already led to different and more varied emissions testing.
It’s not just about proving the perpetrator, it’s about proving the circumstance because there will be different sentencing - and sometimes even different laws - depending on the circumstance.
This is still wrong. A crime is an act of a person, which fulfills rather strict criteria. Both the legal theory and typical legislation [1] requires, among other, mens rea - guilty mind. Without a specific person convicted, you can't say with certainty there was a guilty mind. Thus indeed, before conviction we can't tell with certainty that there was a crime committed.
In your example of "murder", all we can say with certainty is that a person is dead. Evidence may establish a 3rd party was involved, which would indicate killing (as opposed to accident, natural causes, or self harm). There still remain three distinct possibilities: criminal murder, or the lower culpability of homicide (for example, a negligent homicide), or justified killing (for example, act of self defense). Those possibilities span the whole gamut from culpability to innocence, and warrant much different end results for the alleged perpetrator.
In case of the DieselGate here, investigating & prosecuting is the correct & practical option. We all suspect there was a crime, but there's a reason justice is dispensed via a deliberative process, rather than via mob rule.
Moreover, white collar crimes like the DieselGate usually don't have evidence as clear cut as an official memo saying, "I, hereby undersigned, order my underlings to break the law by doing X, Y, and Z.". A more realistic scenario is a series of emails & phone calls saying, "make the new engine meet the target parameters by this quarter's end", coupled with tacitly ignoring a footnote in an engineer's memo saying, "However we recommend against leaving the high performance mode enabled for production vehicles", along with a nod to a mid level manager who asks, "should we match the high performance mode to that of our competitors' car models X, Y, and Z?". In which case establishing responsibility & culpability will take some thorough work.
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[1] aside of the small set of strict liability crimes where the event/fact alone constitutes a crime
This is exactly what you do its innocent until proven guilty the amount of publicly available evidence proves their guilt.
I know this is, in day-to-day parlance, irrelevant. We see the amount of evidence, we form an opinion in our mind. It's not that I think Stadler never knew anything. But this being HN, the discussion could be a bit more elevated than in a pub :) Plus, "presumption of innocence" is a legal term, I think it is worth discussing it with a "lawful" mindset.