That said, juries should be skeptical of the story they are being sold, right? Maybe we should not lock up very many people for whom there isn’t any hard evidence of their guilt.
Would you consider eyewitness testimony to be 'hard evidence'?
I don't have any CCTV in my house, so if a guest visiting my house beats me up, although my face is indisputable evidence that someone attacked me, the only evidence they did it is my eyewitness testimony.
Would our society be a better place if my attacker was convicted, or if he wasn't?
What if they were twins?
What if the person was wearing a mask that you knew your guest owned, but it wasn't actually him?
You're entering into this with the assumption that you know who beat you up. The police don't have anything other than your assertion. That's why corroborating evidence is needed.
More likely, if a guest beats you up, there will be some other witnesses and some motives. Anyway, police can get search warrants and work it out, or like… maybe the guest will feel guilty and admit what they did, perhaps after a stern talking-to along with the implication that they’ll probably be found out after some investigation anyway.
ROFLMAO!
Not to say that it should be completely discounted, only that it should be treated as evidence with a less than perfectly reliable. Not quite "hard" evidence, but definitely something that should be considered.
At the end of the day the one dude still hit his friend with his truck and threw him at least 10 feet across a wide sidewalk and into a wrought iron fence hard enough to partially impale him. Everyone agreed that the one guy was driving, and that the other guy was hit. The only real evidence was how injured the victim was. It was completely open and shut. There was plenty of supposed nuance. None of it mattered. Still drunken assault with a deadly weapon.
I’d honestly need more than that if impaneled on a jury to conclude beyond reasonable doubt that you’d correctly identified your assailant. Hell, if the only evidence is eyewitness testimony from the victim, an obviously-interested party, I’m not even sure I’d be comfortable awarding civil damages. Especially in a modern context, where every sneeze throws off a digital and/or forensic trail.
> Maybe we should not lock up *very many people* for whom there isn’t any hard evidence of their guilt.
This should be very rare, so even if we caught everybody who spontaneously beat up their hosts, there still wouldn’t be very many people in this category.
This doesn’t mean we don’t have to investigate any crimes of course. It is important for the legal system to work for victims too. But if you get beat up and point to some guest of yours, an investigation can start, a search warrant can be generated, we can see if they’ve discussed it with anybody, etc etc.
Are you assuming most assaults are premeditated? I'd say most aren't. Even something like burglaries/robberies are often opportunistic, without anything incriminating like a heist planning board.
It isn’t most assaults, it is a sort of weird artificial situation constructed to have a crime committed without any physical evidence, but which could be solved just assuming the victim’s testimony was 100% true and accurate.
If this is the case, we need body cams on us 24/7 and many more cameras on other areas. The me-too movement was based on hearsay from sometimes two decades ago. Should everyone in these cases walk free?
I suspect there would be more vigilante justice in these cases.