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- Withholding judgment until you know all the facts is the best way to deal with legal trials, as well as with the problems you face at school.
by Connor Vasu
In the much-publicized 2011 murder trial of Casey Anthony, many people said that Anthony deserved to go to jail for allegedly killing her daughter, but Anthony had been tried in the legal system and was proven innocent.
In today’s blame-based society, it is important to remember that under the law, it is actually innocent until proven guilty, not guilty until proven innocent. Too often we judge without knowing the full story and insist that a person is guilty after he has won a case or before he has even been tried.
When a person has not been convicted or has not yet been proven guilty in a courtroom, we have to assume the person is innocent. Otherwise, the one who is alleged of a crime will have to prove that he did not commit it, rather than the other way around. If that happens, then the victims will be in the defense chair. Defense should not be the job of the alleged criminal.
At this school, this guilty-before-innocent culture is present. If a teacher sees a student forget to turn in an assignment, the teacher should ask the student what happened instead of immediately giving him a zero.
In the recent killing of Trayvon Martin, an African-American teenager, many people drew conclusions without knowing all of the facts.
George Zimmerman allegedly killed Martin in February, sparking a wave of racial tension and controversy.
Critics of Zimmerman say that he should go to jail for what he did, and maybe he should. But, in order to find out all the facts about what happened, there needs to be a fair trial in which people presume Zimmerman’s innocence.
Although Zimmerman admitted to the killing, we cannot assume we know the whole story before his potential trial. According to Zimmerman, he acted in self-defense. We should take his word at face value and not assume anything before a potential trial. If a trial occurs, we will know for sure whether Zimmerman killed Martin within his own legal rights or not.
Martin seems to be an innocent teenager and the way the killing is depicted in the media makes it seem like it is all Zimmerman’s fault, but making conclusions before a trial is not the right way to deal with a crime.
So before you go accuse someone of doing something wrong, get your facts right. If justice prevails, you are going to need them.
