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There is a big difference between "Innocent" and "not guilty", and there is a reason that courts return a "Not Guilty" verdict, and not an "innocent" one. Plenty of cases fall within a hair's width of "beyond a reasonable doubt", and I very much doubt you are going to be inviting most of the people falling in that category over to meet the family, after all they are innocent until proven guilty, and likely all around great people right?

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.



> There is a big difference between "Innocent" and "not guilty"

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


There is. Innocent means you did not commit the crime. Not Guilty, OTOH, means that the current presented evidence was not sufficient to determine that you did commit the crime, thus not meeting its burden of proof.


Juries only rule guilty or not guilty - innocence comes up in appealing existing guilty convictions.


In Scotland, juries can return one of three rulings: "guilty", "not guilty", and "not proven". I'm not sure what effect this has in practice.


> Legal process fails plenty of times, saying that you are morally obligated to believe in its judgements

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.




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