Innocent until proven guilty?

I don't know about the Michael Vick case but he is pretty clearly regarded as guilty before there is any proof or trial. They may have enough already to prove that he is guilty but we do not know that. Trying to be faithful to the rule, "innocent until proven guilty," is not always easy. Consider the following case which is a true account of the trial of a burglar:

The defendant was a tall, slim, nice-looking black man of about thirty years of age. He was accused of multiple burglaries in a couple of very up-scale neighborhoods. He was facing 29 separate counts. His modus operandi was to break into the houses of wealthy old people, rough them up, take their money and jewelry. He went so far in some cases as to drag them around by the hair. He did not use a gun unless he found one in the home he was robbing. Refusing to confess, he had demanded a trial by jury.

The Prosecutor, a fairly young white lawyer, began the trial by enumerating the evidence he was prepared to demonstrate. As the burglar hadn't killed anyone there were many eyewitnesses to his crimes. In virtually all homes his fingerprints were found. He had no recollection of where he was on nights of the crimes and therefore no alibis. Two pairs of shoes were found in his apartment. The tread on both pairs matched perfectly with tracks found outside some of the homes. His girlfriend was caught leaving his apartment with a pillowcase from one of the houses filled with jewelry identified as that of the various victims. Now I submit that in order to believe this defendant was innocent you had to believe that the prosecutor was a pathological liar and would not be able to present the evidence he claimed. I do not believe any one of the twelve jurors, whether white or not, believed he was innocent. I certainly did not believe it. I am almost positive the judge did not believe it and was pretty obviously miffed that he had to preside over such a useless trial. Even so, I believe he did try to be fair and impartial, although I am sure it was difficult for him.

Our jury found him guilty on 28 of the 29 charges. The one charge on which there was one holdout was because one of the black jurors was talked down to by the white jury foreman and just stubbornly refused to give up. When this count was read out by the foreman I thought the judge might have a heart attack as there was no doubt whatsoever that the defendant was guilty.

Do I think we should do away with the concept of innocent until proven guilty. I don't think so. The worst thing one might say about a case like this is that it was a waste of time. The guy was so overwhelmingly guilty there really should not have been a trial - but as he refused to confess there was no other choice. However, on the basis of this experience and a few others, I long ago came to the conclusion that if I ever stand accused of a crime I did not commit, I would rather be tried by a competent judge than a jury (juries can be extremely irrational).

If they were ever to go to trial does anyone believe Bush and Cheney are innocent?

Why is it that everytime the MSM mentions the benchmarks they always mention the sharing of oil but they never mention with whom it is supposed to be shared. They obviously want us to believe it's all about sharing between the Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites, when in fact by far the greatest share is to go to the huge Oil companies. I don't believe the Iraqis are going to fall for this attempted robbery no matter how long they remain under siege.

LKBIQ:
"The intellectual desolation, artificially produced by converting immature human beings into mere machines."
Karl Marx