Giggs trial

It’s not clear cut either way, evidenced by the split jury in the initial trial. Reading the court reports it is quite easy to see how they failed to reach a verdict, too. Nobody comes out of it with their head held high.
 
giggs-beckham said:
Because one is innocent until proven guilty
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see @sullydnl's post literally 9 posts before yours.

the presumption of innocence is a legal principle which is designed to put the burden of proving someone's guilt on the prosecution, beyond a reasonable doubt.

failing to prove guilt does not prove their innocence of the charge. the prosecution either proves guilt or does not - hence guilty or not guilty - there is never, in a criminal matter, a finding of 'innocence'.
 
AbusementPark said:
We will await Depay coming out in support of his former teammate/coach. No smoke without fire and I believe the same in the Mendy case as well. Truth is no one will ever know exactly what happened so it’s hard to judge or draw any sort of conclusion from media reporting.
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I can assure you, it's entirely possible to have smoke without fire - case in point one of my closest friends of over 20 years who was accused of sexual assault by a female colleague when he had the sheer audacity to turn down her drunken approach on a work night out. He was lucky, because he was calling a friend as she approached and interrupted him, and the call went to voicemail, recording the entire interaction and proving his account of what happened was true. Had he not been dialling that friend, and had his friend not had the foresight to not delete the voicemail, things could have been very different.

This ridiculous post-metoo notion that all women must be believed and thus all allegations by women must be true can be extremely damaging. Thankfully we have a competent legal system where the burden of proof is high and more often than not, justice is served, but I urge you all to think twice before just assuming the likes of Mendy or Giggs are guilty.

Wilt said:
Yet another multi millionaire footballer walks away.

There must be a common denominator ….wonder what it is?
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Innocence perhaps?
 
stepic said:
see @sullydnl's post literally 9 posts before yours.

the presumption of innocence is a legal principle which is designed to put the burden of proving someone's guilt on the prosecution, beyond a reasonable doubt.

failing to prove guilt does not prove their innocence of the charge. the prosecution either proves guilt or does not - hence guilty or not guilty - there is never, in a criminal matter, a finding of 'innocence'.
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Prove to me God doesn't exist...see you can't!
 
Redanian said:
I can assure you, it's entirely possible to have smoke without fire - case in point one of my closest friends of over 20 years who was accused of sexual assault by a female colleague when he had the sheer audacity to turn down her drunken approach on a work night out. He was lucky, because he was calling a friend as she approached and interrupted him, and the call went to voicemail, recording the entire interaction and proving his account of what happened was true. Had he not been dialling that friend, and had his friend not had the foresight to not delete the voicemail, things could have been very different.

This ridiculous post-metoo notion that all women must be believed and thus all allegations by women must be true can be extremely damaging. Thankfully we have a competent legal system where the burden of proof is high and more often than not, justice is served, but I urge you all to think twice before just assuming the likes of Mendy or Giggs are guilty.



Innocence perhaps?
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I don't think anyone is saying that they're all definitely guilty. If anything, the prevailing opinion on many social media platforms (even in the "ridiculous post Metoo" world") can be that all the women in these cases are automatically liars and their footballing heroes are innocent.

Now this might be the case sometimes (or even in the majority) but when so few cases result in guilty verdicts, people have every right to question whether something is going wrong. Is there some kind of conspiracy to send male footballers to prison for crimes they didn't commit or do we have multiple cases of the justice system failing vulnerable women?

A theory I've explored elsewhere but when looking at a variety of historic cases in the entertainment world, very few were ever found guilty of anything (even when police investigations happened). They were deemed innocent, even though many now claim that they had their own suspicions etc. How many cases will we look at in 30 years with everyone kicking themselves that they didn't believe the victim and placed trust in the courts/police.
 
MancunianAngels said:
when so few cases result in guilty verdicts, people have every right to question whether something is going wrong
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I think this is because the burden of proof is high and these sorts of cases are extremely difficult to prove guilt - personally I think this is an example of things going right, not wrong. These cases very often boil down to he said/she said, with very little in the way of actual evidence, and I don't know about you but for me a society that is prepared to ruin lives on the basis of one person's word over another is far worse than the alternative that some people get away with such crimes. It's unfortunate, but as William Blackstone is often attributed with saying, it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

A theory I've explored elsewhere but when looking at a variety of historic cases in the entertainment world, very few were ever found guilty of anything (even when police investigations happened). They were deemed innocent, even though many now claim that they had their own suspicions etc. How many cases will we look at in 30 years with everyone kicking themselves that they didn't believe the victim and placed trust in the courts/police.
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I think you mean deemed not guilty, rather than innocent, but for the same reasons I've stated above, I'm not going to be worrying 30 years from now about who I believed or didn't believe. Ultimately that's for courts and juries to decide, all we can do is believe neither accuser nor accused until evidence and legal process determines one way or another. Personally I think it would be better for everyone concerned, if both parties remained anonymous until trial, or at least until charges are made with intention to prosecute, but I appreciate this is essentially impossible in today's world of social media and global audiences.
 
Redanian said:
I think this is because the burden of proof is high and these sorts of cases are extremely difficult to prove guilt - personally I think this is an example of things going right, not wrong. These cases very often boil down to he said/she said, with very little in the way of actual evidence, and I don't know about you but for me a society that is prepared to ruin lives on the basis of one person's word over another is far worse than the alternative that some people get away with such crimes. It's unfortunate, but as William Blackstone is often attributed with saying, it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.



I think you mean deemed not guilty, rather than innocent, but for the same reasons I've stated above, I'm not going to be worrying 30 years from now about who I believed or didn't believe. Ultimately that's for courts and juries to decide, all we can do is believe neither accuser nor accused until evidence and legal process determines one way or another. Personally I think it would be better for everyone concerned, if both parties remained anonymous until trial, or at least until charges are made with intention to prosecute, but I appreciate this is essentially impossible in today's world of social media and global audiences.
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You do make some valid points here.

Regarding, point 1: Ultimately, what you say is correct. However, that results in cases being thrown out of court and guilty men not being punished for their actions. There has been far too many cases of domestic abuse where the victim has either died or suffered life changing injuries before anything happens. That is wrong. Certainly, for people with poorer backgrounds, there is very little support.

And I'd also argue that whilst the lives of the accused can often be paused during a trial (many still earn substantial wages and live very comfortably), the lives of the victim (assuming they are telling the truth) can often be ruined completely and once the trial is over, they receive almost no emotional support and in domestic cases, often end up going back to their abuser because nobody else will look at them.

Not saying the recent cases high profile cases have been guilty/not guilty/innocent (or whatever terminology you want to use) but at least two of them will earn substantial amounts of money to play football this season. Again, any victims (again, assuming they are telling the truth) will be a lot less comfortable and will not have the benefit of earning a lot of money each week.

I have zero idea how you solve this btw

Regarding your second point. Again, agree with this. It would be possible but maybe we need to rethink how more mainstream outlets cover these stories.
 
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