Thread: What is everyone doing, right NOW????

Originally Posted by Tombie

Innocent till proven guilty mate...

Horrible accusations and horrible crimes but guilty till proven innocent remember....

I agree that they are horrible crimes and I am not going for what the press said, it is not a gossip it is a police report the said that they are serving four charges related to making indecent images of a child between March and July last year.
I do not take into account the other charges related to allegations of sexual assault, they have to be proved in court.

I would like to have a clarification regarding the legal (and not in reference to this case) system, why a person is arrested if is innocent till proved guilty?
Looks to me that in the way that is working the person is guilty until he/she can prove that is innocent which to me is wrong
What happens if the person do not have a fair chance (good defense) to prove that he/she is not guilty?

Originally Posted by bacicat

Anyway, what I'm actually doing is listening to Dave Brubeck while sipping a glass of Scotch.

That will unboil your blood Chucaro.

Good choice

Chucaro, You get arrested at the initial time. Based on the offence you either are allowed bail, or if you're deemed to be a threat then you have to remain in police custody.
How you fight the charges is entirely up to you, unfortunately the more you can spend on a lawyer, the more likely you are to get off
I'd agree with Gav, doesn't matter what the truth is, but sensationalised crap sells.

Originally Posted by Disco Muppet

Good choice

Chucaro, You get arrested at the initial time. Based on the offence you either are allowed bail, or if you're deemed to be a threat then you have to remain in police custody.
How you fight the charges is entirely up to you, unfortunately the more you can spend on a lawyer, the more likely you are to get off
I'd agree with Gav, doesn't matter what the truth is, but sensationalised crap sells.

So, it will be fair to say that if the offense is regarded serious by the prosecutor and the judge and the person do not have money for the bail he is as close as guilty as he/she can be?
And that if do not have the money for a defense which is as good or better that the prosecutor he/she will be an innocent person in jail?

Is so, forget about "trial by Media" is trial by an unjust system.
Then again I guess that there is not such thing as Court of Justice is a Court of Law

That depends.
The sorts of offences where you get remanded in custody are normally REALLY serious ones, where it appears to be a pretty clear cut case against you, which are normally the ones that attract high profile defence lawyers.
So just because you've been remanded in custody isn't necessarily a guarantee of a conviction, but it certainly doesn't look good.

If you have to question the "Innocent until proven guilty" concept then, well, I really don't know where to go from there. But clearly you've never been on the receiving end of the Australian legal system.

I could list my own experiences, but suffice it to say that the legal system as we know it requires that there be someone to blame for an event. Look at the situation in the case of road accidents. Police prosecution will fight hammer and tong to find someone that's done something in the event that they can point to as causation.

Example. I now have a fraud conviction against my name because when I applied for, and on subsequent renewals of my driving licence I did not tick the box that states that I suffer from blackouts or seizures. Considered that I first applied for a licence at 16, I'm now 40 and have had (according to records) 14 renewals and I did not tick the box on any of them I was charged with 14 counts of the same event. Now the fact that I had never, prior to the accident that I had, never been diagnosed with any condition that would lead me to suspect that I did in fact suffer from blackouts or seizures why would I.

It cost me $80,000 , 5 years, my career & trade (to prove that I didn't know meant proving that I now did have a condition and such a condition made me medically unfit for my trade) and now my marriage. Added to that I was also charged with negligent driving occasioning grievous bodily harm because despite there being signs on the motorway banning cyclists from being there when I blacked out and ran off the road I hit one. Now his ignorance (now take it I'm not anti cycling, I used to quite successfully race) is in no way contributory. My undiagnosed medical condition was solely the cause.

So there I am sitting at home after the accident and being discharged from hospital when there's a knock at the door and I'm arrested for this and dragged off and formally charged.

So innocent until proven guilty I may have been as I was let out again (26 hours later) without bail but charged and summoned to appear. But, and I quote from the accident investigation squad member (who was after she was finished with my case medically dismissed from the force due to a number of things but suffice it to say she went on a personal vendetta against whoever she was investigating to the point of following them after hours etc), my "reckless disregard for dealing with a medical condition in a common sense manner led to the reckless endangerment of countless lives every day that this criminal (bear in mind I had never been arrested/charged or anything ever previous to this) spent on the road" was the single cause of the accident and despite having my own GP, two teaching professors of neurology, a cardiologist and the RTA's own head of medical standards all say that I had no record, knowledge or previous diagnosis of my condition I was found guilty.

So innocent until proven guilty it may be. But you're as guilty as they want you to be in the end. Sure I could have kept fighting it but at the end of the day where does it end. We did the exercise, of looking at each level of appeals process, to the extent of researching which judge you'd be up against and what their record was against matters of the same nature. In the end no guarantees can be made except this. You'll be broke and the lawyers won't.

As for Rolfy, I'll consider him innocent in the concept of the law but in this case to charge him as they've done then they've found some evidence already and it'll take some pretty hardcore proof to knock it on the head. But as a potential fiddler, well some of us know what happens to them once they're locked up.

Jeez, that's bloody rough. What a load of ****e. You're a more tolerant man than I am it seems, I'd have burnt the bloody building down.

The only consideration I got was that I only had one charge of fraud, not all 14. Was facing 5-8 years for each. Plus the neg driving.

Ended up with $2000- in fines, 200 hours community service and 2 year good behaviour bond.

Haven't had meaningful work since, not qualified for anything else, been diagnosed as clinically depressed (there's a shock), trying to afford psychologists on centreline and now trying to work out where to live when the house sells in the next month or two. Added to that I've been disco-less for 3 months. Hopefully Monday or Tuesday and at least that'll be over.

It's funny how we haven't been told about crap like this, but then again Injustice Studies wouldn't attract many students would it.
Even when lecturers put a positive "the system is working" type spin on it, it still sounds like a load of bollocks, and it certainly makes me think about if it's a career path I really want to explore.
Here's hoping when you get the landy back things pick up a bit mate, if you're ever in O town give us a buzz and we can hit a track or two.
Cheers
Muppet