People should be innocent until proven guilty. You can really ruin someone's life via a false allegation. If your problem is that powerful people get away with crime, then solve that problem By actually solving it and not by compromising our legal system and someone's life/integrity.
Absolutely agree. That's the ideal solution. I think until there needs to be a way that the public knows of things though. If, for example, our president were to get caught doing something truly illegal, like being accused of murder or selling uranium or something, it should absolutely be known. Perhaps there should be a distinction between 'public figure' and 'private citizen'. But at the same time, we still have issues with things like getting rape convictions. An overwhelming majority of rapists get off without anything, and only a small number of rape accusations are false. So do people have a right to know that someone they are considering dating had a rape case brought against them? Or outside of that, murder? Assault and battery? Armed robbery?
" If, for example, our president were to get caught doing something truly illegal, like being accused of murder or selling uranium or something, it should absolutely be known" Did he get caught doing something truly illegal or did he get accused of doing something truly illegal? If he got caught then it's a lot more than an allegation. If it's just an allegation (no significant evidence) then there's no reason to make it news. If there is significant evidence and it's a major crime the best place for the evidence is a court room. A controlled environment. If he's convicted then you can tell everybody. Otherwise the public is just going to apply an outside force to what's supposed to be an unbiased process. >So do people have a right to know that someone they are considering dating had a rape case brought against them? Or outside of that, murder? Assault and battery? Armed robbery? No. If they weren't convicted then no, people have absolutely no right to know. There is no way to let people know about allegations that were never proven without ruining the lives of innocent people. Bad guys are always going to get away and there's nothing we can do to make sure all of them are caught, but there's a lot more we can do to make sure innocents don't have their lives ruined. If we let a bad guy go we still have a chance of catching them, if we ruin an innocent person's life there's no going back. It's not ideal but nothing is and it's MORE ideal than the alternative.