Some people like to cling to the idea of innocent until proven guilty because it’s a nice sentiment that makes things easy — “I don’t have to make a decision about this person, I can just agree with the court outcome” — but it’s meaningless outside of the legal process. Many people do not have a clear understanding of what it takes to prove guilt in court (and also do not understand what can derail a conviction) and would be surprised to learn how difficult it can be in some situations where there is (to the layman) clear evidence.

The principle is that for most people accused of a crime by the state, the state has much, much more power than the accused. To act as one check against abuse of that power, we establish a higher bar for conviction of a crime than for innocence.

But if Frank’s lunch is missing from the fridge, and he thinks Homer ate it, there is no massive power imbalance, so Frank doesn’t have the same burden of proof to decide to dislike Homer, or to accuse Homer.

Of course, if the state listens to Frank and decides to charge Homer with theft, then the state has a higher burden of proof to impose criminal consequences.

If homer is declared innocent under law because the state couldn’t prove its case, we don't go back to Frank and harass him for making a false claim. His standard for accusing Homer is lower than the state’s standard for laying charges.

After all, the state has investigators and attorney generals and grand juries and congressional panels and other apparatus for deciding whether to pursue a case in court.

We only go after Frank is he was truly reckless, not just on the basis of whether the state can meet the very high bar of proving the case in court.

People get this very badly wrong when it comes to accusations of sexual misconduct or rape from long ago. The standard for a person accusing another person is much lower than the standard for the state obtaining a conviction in court, and that is as it should be.

It's not just state power but the combination of that with the kinds of harms that are inflicted as criminal punishment, which is why even the State does not bear the same high burden with mere civil claims.

> If homer is declared innocent under law because the state couldn’t prove its case, we don't go back to Frank and harass him for making a false claim.

In fact, Frank might still prevail against Homer in court on a civil claim for restitution for Homer having taken the sandwich.

“The media” collectively might have such power, but the media isn't a single entity like the state, and in any case neither the media nor the entities actually comprising it inflict criminal punishment, and even the State does not bear the high burden of criminal proof when it isn't trying to inflict criminal punishment.

Maybe not that large of a problem on a world scale, but it does feel very unjust to me.

Could you elaborate a bit on how that works? I'm not saying you should actively vocalise that you don't believe a victim, just that you shouldn't be piling on to someone or contributing to them losing everything if you don't know whether they're guilty and are otherwise unfamiliar with the victim.

Legal process fails plenty of times, saying that you are morally obligated to believe in its judgements is insane. The only obligations legal judgements place are upon the people being tried and the apparatus of the state, nothing else.

No, there isn't. Innocence is precisely the absence of guilt; to be innocent is to be not guilty and vice versa.

I'm not saying you should have blind faith in the legal system, but I am saying that I think it's morally better to withhold judgment until it has run its course. Additionally, if you are otherwise unrelated to a certain case, I would still be inclined to have less trust in your own judgment than in the judgment of people who spent far more time on it than you, unless you have specific reason to believe they're especially likely to have ruled incorrectly other than not trusting the process, such as conflicts of interest.

This is not really accurate (but see below). The notion of burden of proof shows up in debate, public discourse and logic as well as law. An alternative formulation of "innocent until proven guilty" "the one who asserts must prove". It's simply saying, we don't accept claims without proof, because the alternative is often the logical fallacy of argument from ignorance.

Every day you are constantly making assessments on people based on the information you have, whether that’s in the context of a crime or otherwise.

What you're describing here is the standard of proof, not so much the burden of proof. The plaintiff always needs to prove their case. In a criminal case, they must prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, there must be a preponderance of evidence. In our daily life, we should have some reason we believe someone is guilty of something even if it doesn't extend as far as the standards of criminal prosecution. This is still taking on the burden of proof.

It is unreasonable and impractical to expect everyone to abide by it. It is not at all unreasonable and impractical for a particular individual (e.g. me) to abide by it.

It is unreasonable and impractical to expect that if I leave my house doors open when I'm at work that no one will ever steal anything from my house. It is not unreasonable and impractical for me to abide by the moral principle of not stealing when I see a house open day after day.

So I agree with you - I don't expect all of society to abide by the principle. Yet it doesn't somehow exonerate their behavior when they violate the principle.

>Many people do not have a clear understanding of what it takes to prove guilt in court (and also do not understand what can derail a conviction) and would be surprised to learn how difficult it can be in some situations where there is (to the layman) clear evidence.

In a comment further down you point out:

>Outside of the legal system “innocent until proven guilty” is a very common cause of the revictimisation of victims.

I think that's a cop out in response to a cop out. Yes, certainly some people (in my experience, a tiny number of people) will invoke "innocent until proven guilty" to avoid any kind of burden of responsibility to the victim. In the vast majority of times I've seen it invoked, it is someone pointing out that others are jumping to conclusions, and the evidence is slight, and often that one person's claims have much heavier weight than others. A not insignificant number of these (in my opinion) involve fighting back at a bias of sort (race, gender, class, etc) where one person is being given more weight to others.

When it comes to issues where the parties involved know one another (i.e. not someone commenting about a case on the Internet), people invoke it far, far more often to counter mob mentality and perceived biases than they do to avoid making a decision.

The legal meaning is irrelevant to most people who invoke it. I rarely see people (in real life, outside of message boards) saying "Well it hasn't been proven in court, so innocent until proven guilty". They apply it to situations in front of them, involving people they know. And they are saying "Really, I don't see strong evidence for it."

Now yes, at times the victims are revictimized. No one has solved that problem. In my life I've seen it way too many times that something bad happens to someone, they need someone to blame, to the point of constructing a narrative in their head that they believe, which is why people say "I don't doubt he/she believes his/her story, but I need to determine if it is true."

(Not talking about serious issues like rape, but I see this behavior from victims very often when, say, theft is involved).