On Innocent Until Proven Guilty—and Why It Still Matters
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There is a decisive line that separates a free society from a coercive one. It is not drawn by flags or slogans, nor by the intensity of public emotion. It is drawn by a single moral principle:
Guilt must be proven.
Not assumed, not demanded, and not enforced by emotion-driven social intimidation.
When belief is demanded before proof, justice is already dead.
Gérôme depicts the ancient crowd at its most dangerous: unified in emotion, drunk on moral certainty, and eager to decide life and death without restraint. The individual disappears; judgment is outsourced to collective rage. In such moments, guilt is assumed, mercy is mocked, and justice is impossible.
This is the scene due process was designed to prevent. Where the mob rules, innocence has no defense.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is not a procedural technicality. It is a moral restraint, born of Western Christian anthropology, codified into Anglo-American law, and designed to limit the damage that fallen men inevitably inflict when power goes unchecked.
A society that abandons this principle has not evolved. It has regressed and become inverted against truth and justice.
❧ THE MORAL ROOTS OF DUE PROCESS
American law did not emerge from a vacuum. It rests on older truths:
That man is fallen, that certainty is rare, and that judgment belongs to lawful authority—not the crowd’s, friend’s or family’s opinions.
Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries on the Laws of England shaped American jurisprudence, articulated the principle plainly: “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”
Crucially, due process restrains the state—not the conscience of the citizen. The requirement that guilt be proven in a court of law does not forbid the public from asking questions, weighing evidence, or forming provisional judgments. It exists to prevent the government from exercising power without proof, not to demand intellectual submission from free men and women. A society that confuses legal restraint with enforced silence has already misunderstood both liberty and law.
The Founders inherited this restraint and embedded it in law; not because they trusted men, but because they did not.
The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment extends this protection against the states.
Due process exists precisely to restrain passion, hysteria, and collective vengeance. Law is slow by design because justice requires patience.
Truth cannot be coerced into existence by outrage.
❧ THE CONSTITUTIONAL FIREWALL
American liberty rests on moral restraint made law.
First Amendment “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.”
This protects not only speech, but conscience and thought—the right to question, form independent opinions, reason, and dissent without coercion.
Fifth Amendment “…nor shall any person be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
This codifies the ancient moral insight that power must be restrained because man is fallible.
Fourteenth Amendment “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
This ensures that justice is not subject to local passions or mobs. Together, these form a moral firewall against tyranny—legal, social, or ideological.
Free speech is meaningless if dissent is punished by mobs instead of law.
❧ QUESTIONS ARE NOT ACCUSATIONS
To ask questions is not to declare innocence; to doubt is not to deny reality; and to withhold judgment is not moral treason. Yet we are witnessing a dangerous inversion: a demand that belief precede proof, and that skepticism be treated as vice.
This is not moral clarity. It is moral coercion.
When inquiry is treated as morally reprehnsible, truth is no longer the goal; conformity is.
As John Adams warned: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
A demand for immediate belief does not honor justice. It replaces it with obedience to the angry mob.
❧ THE SOVIET LOGIC: SHAME, GASLIGHT, SILENCE
The tactic is old and unmistakable.
- First, assert an official narrative.
- Then, declare it morally mandatory.
- Next, label all questions as dangerous, disloyal, or deranged.
- Finally, shame, threaten, and socially punish dissent.
This is not the posture of a free people. This is profoundly anti-American, and characteristic of authoritarian regimes.
The Soviet Union did not rely solely on prisons. It relied on social terror—gaslighting, public denunciation, enforced unanimity, and the weaponization of shame. Citizens learned quickly that agreement was safer than truth.
When people are told:
- You must believe this
- You may not question
- Silence or conformity is the price of social survival
Freedom in this case has already been hollowed out—long before any law is changed.
❧ FREE SPEECH IS NOT A COURTESY; IT IS A BULWARK
The First Amendment exists for this very reason. “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech.”
This protection is not limited to polite speech, popular speech, or officially approved speech. It exists to safeguard conscience itself. A society that insists everyone must agree—or else—has abandoned the American understanding of liberty. Free speech is meaningless if dissent is punished by mob enforcement rather than law.
To silence questions is to silence reason.
To silence reason is to enthrone power.
❧ WHEN EMOTION OVERRIDES LAW, THE MOB BECOMES SOVEREIGN
Due process exists precisely for emotionally charged cases. If law only applies when it feels comfortable, it is not law; it is preference. The crowd always believes itself righteous. History is littered with the innocent destroyed by its certainty.
Justice Robert Jackson warned: “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”
Nor is it a permission slip for hysteria.
A civilization is judged not by how loudly it asserts righteousness, but by how faithfully it restrains itself when passions run high.
❧ QUESTIONS THAT REVEAL VIRTUE OR LACK THEREOF
- Is prudence now cowardice?
- Is restraint now complicity?
- Is silence now virtue?
- Is patience now moral failure?
- Is doubt now disloyalty?
- Is inquiry now evidence of bad character?
- Is refusing to rush judgment now treated as cruelty?
- Is emotional certainty mistaken for moral authority?
- Is outrage considered a substitute for reason?
- Is obedience praised more highly than wisdom?
If so, then virtue itself has been inverted.
St. Thomas Aquinas taught that justice is impossible without prudence—the habit of judging rightly. Strip prudence from justice, and what remains is force.
Piero del Pollaiolo or Pollaiuolo (Florence 1441 – Rome 1496)
Prudence (noun)
The virtue by which a person discerns the right course of action in concrete circumstances through reason, restraint, and moral judgment. Prudence governs decision-making by weighing evidence, foreseeing consequences, and resisting impulse. It is not fear or hesitation, but right reason applied to action.
In classical and Christian ethics, prudence is the guiding virtue of justice; without it, moral action collapses into recklessness or force.
A society that confuses emotional certainty with moral authority will eventually devour the innocent in the name of “order.“
❧ THE BOTTOM LINE
To insist on due process is not to undermine justice: It IS justice
To defend free speech is not to excuse evil. It is to preserve the conditions under which truth can be known. A society that demands belief before proof and silence instead of inquiry has already chosen power over justice.
If this sounds like you, the problem is not the questions being asked; it is the virtues YOU no longer recognize and embody.
❧ A Brief Examination of Conscience
Please reflect honestly:
- Do I demand certainty before evidence has been weighed?
- Do questions make me uneasy—or angry and emotionally unhinged?
- Do I confuse emotional conviction or empathy for survivors with moral authority?
- Do I believe obedience to those behaving like the thought police is safer than speaking what I know to be truth?
- Do I trust process only when it affirms my own conclusions, or the conclusions of authority figures and “experts”?
- Do I believe free speech applies only to approved views?
- Do I still believe prudence (the foundation for justice) is a virtue?
If any of these questions are difficult, the next step is not condemnation of those who make you feel angry and confused—but reflection.
❧ THE BOTTOM BOTTOM LINE
As Americans, we are not subjects. We are citizens. We are permitted—indeed expected—to think, to reason, to question, and to form our own independent judgments. That right does not vanish because a case is emotional, controversial, or unresolved. No person, institution, influencer, or crowd has the authority to dictate what others must believe about a murder case that has not yet gone to trial. Due process restrains the state; free speech protects the people. To demand intellectual conformity before a verdict is not justice: it is an assault on the very liberties that distinguish a free nation from a tyrannical regime.
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