Don't take Presumption as a given

Two Americans are in jail in Juarez after being
accused of drug trafficking. They have been found
guilty and sentenced to 5 years in prison.

BUT their claim, supported by three witnesses, is
that the military planted the drugs in their truck.
One witness was killed before the trial and the
other two disappeared.One cannot overlook the fact
that the vast majority of prisoners, worldwide, claim
innocence.

However we also know of cases where years
later prisoners are released and then exonerated because
they were innocent all along and should never have been
sent to jail/prison for a crime they did not commit.

Recently a New York man was released after 27 years when
in fact he was innocent all along. How do you compensate
for taking so many years and life experiences away from
someone? How do you compensate for the horrors endured
while locked up?

A most interesting aspect of this story from Juarez
is the fact that in Mexico an accused is presumed to
be guilty and has the burden of proving innocence. Consider
the handicap of trying to gather evidence to prove
a government agency planted evidence against you or
tortured you or in anyway infringed upon your basic civil rights.

In our country and in many western nations, the presumption
is that an accused is innocent until proven guilty. Proving
innocence when unjustly accused is difficult enough without
the added problem of having the burden of proof.

Americans tend to take our Bill of Rights for granted and do
not stop to realize that any one of us could be falsely accused
because of mistaken identity or any of a litany of hard to
imagine occurrences. Go to
and read about a woman who spent 9 years in prison for a crime she
had nothing to do with.

The show Sixty Minutes, which has the resources, were able to prove her
innocence as well as that of another gentleman, also prosecuted by
the Dallas District Attorney's Office. It would be nice to think
that these two are a rarity but unfortunately every state has some
who should never have been sent to prison. Even after being shown
to be innocent, the stigma of the accusation follow one for life.