by Claude Opus 5.5
Why does the law say people are innocent until proven guilty? Does that apply outside courtrooms, for example online?
After student journalists published the names of seven people accused in the case behind these seminars, those names spread rapidly online. Many posts treated the accused as guilty. Others defended them by insisting that they are “innocent until proven guilty”. This phrase is one of the best-known principles of law, but people often use it in ways that go beyond what it actually means. To think clearly about this case, it helps to understand why the principle exists, what it requires, and whether it applies to the rest of us when we talk about cases online.
What the principle means in law
The presumption of innocence means that in a criminal trial, the accused does not have to prove that they are innocent. The prosecution has to prove that they are guilty, and it has to do so beyond reasonable doubt. Until that happens, the accused is treated by the legal system as innocent. They cannot be punished as a criminal, and the court must start from the assumption that they did not commit the crime.
The principle is ancient. Versions of it appear in Roman law, and it is protected today in international human rights law, including Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the United States, it is treated as part of the constitutional right to due process.
Why the law says this
There are several reasons.
Protecting the innocent. Any system of justice will make mistakes. The presumption of innocence is a way of deciding which mistakes we would rather make. The English judge William Blackstone wrote in the eighteenth century that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. Convicting an innocent person is seen as a particularly terrible wrong, because the state itself becomes the wrongdoer.
Balancing power. In a criminal case, the state has huge resources: police, forensic experts, prosecutors. An individual accused of a crime usually has far fewer. Putting the burden of proof on the state helps to balance that inequality.
Difficulty of proving a negative. It is often very hard to prove that you did not do something. If people had to prove their innocence, many innocent people could not.
Protecting freedom. A society in which people can be punished on suspicion alone would be frightening for everyone. The presumption of innocence protects all of us from the power of the state.
What it does not mean
The presumption of innocence is a rule about how the state treats people in criminal proceedings. It does not mean that an accused person definitely did not do it. It does not mean that a person who reports a crime is lying. And it does not mean that nobody else may ever form a view about what happened.
For example, a university may find a student responsible for misconduct using a lower standard of proof, as Cornell did in this case. An employer may dismiss someone for misconduct without waiting for a criminal trial. Neither is breaching the legal presumption of innocence, because neither is convicting anyone of a crime.
Does it apply online?
Strictly speaking, the legal presumption of innocence binds courts and the state, not private individuals. You are not breaking the law by believing someone is guilty. But many people argue that the values behind the principle should guide how we behave online too, especially when we talk publicly about real people.
There are good reasons for this. Online accusations can cause enormous harm: people lose jobs, receive threats and have their reputations damaged permanently, sometimes before any evidence has been tested. Online crowds can get things wrong. In this very case, a man with no connection to the events was wrongly identified as one of the seven, and his family received threats. That kind of mistake is exactly what the presumption of innocence exists to prevent. And posting about someone online is a form of public judgement, which can feel like punishment to the person on the receiving end.
On the other hand, there are reasons why people do not simply wait for a court. Most sexual assaults never reach trial, and many that do end without a conviction, because the standard of proof is so high. If we said nothing about anyone until they were convicted, many people who had genuinely been harmed would feel silenced. Some argue that “innocent until proven guilty” can be used to dismiss victims, as though any discussion of an allegation were unfair.
A middle way
Perhaps the best approach is to separate belief from action. You can form a view about what you think probably happened, and you can express sympathy and support for someone who says they were harmed. But before you publicly name, shame or threaten someone, the values behind the presumption of innocence suggest you should ask: How do I know? What evidence have I seen? What if I am wrong? What harm could my post do, and to whom?
Being careful in this way is not the same as taking the side of the accused. It is a way of treating everyone involved, including the complainant, as a real person whose life could be affected by what we say.
Questions for discussion
Should the presumption of innocence apply to what ordinary people say online, or only to courts? Is there a difference between believing someone is guilty and saying so publicly? How would you feel if you were wrongly accused online? And how can we support people who report harm without treating the accused as already convicted?