Hypothetical: Presumption of innocence or guilt debate.

[dahuterschuter]

Suppose there is a person accused of a crime. At this time they are not proven guilty yet of the crime, they have only been accused.

This person is actually a fairly successful tennis player, who makes some amount of their living competing in tennis tournaments. Should this person be allowed to continue competing until such a time as the accusation becomes proven fact? Or is unproven accusation enough to remove a person from a competition or event, alienating them? What precedent does this set? Could the organizers be forced to bar themselves from their own events if any person makes a claim against them? For instance, if you argue that it is just and moral to ban the person from tennis events until they are proven innocent, imagine then that you yourself are a tennis player and will have the same accusation made against you and will be banned from tennis events yourself as well. If you argue that the person should be allowed to compete until proven guilty, imagine then that you yourself are a player and upon arguing this will have such claims made about your character, but will be allowed to compete until proven guilty.

Hypothetical addition: The accused attempts to defend their name by threatening a defamation (an unfounded or incorrect statement of fact which is damaging to the reputation of the person) case against anyone knowingly propagating the claims against their character, and a ban from competition involves such propagation of the claim to others in order to enforce. Do tennis organizers take this chance?

Should a person be presumed innocent and treated as such until an accusing party can prove their guilt, or should a person be presumed guilty and treated as such until this person can prove they are innocent? Which of these would you personally prefer to be the case were you to be accused of a crime or were claims about your character to be made? Would you prefer to have people assume you are not guilty of the claim until evidence dictates otherwise, or would you prefer to have people assume you are guilty until you can find some means of proving you are not? Which creates a more productive legal and social system within which the best possible legal and social results occur? Should legal standards of innocence and guilt be different than social standards, should one be higher than the other, or should both be held to the highest degree given the stakes involved?

 

[Nohbl]

Should this person be allowed to continue competing until such a time as the accusation becomes proven fact?

I think it perhaps depends on the crime, but I stand in the Yes camp here.

Or is unproven accusation enough to remove a person from a competition or event, alienating them?

No.
There was a Reddit post from a father where he told the story of how a false **** accusation from his daughter against his son prompted him to inform the police on his son. His son was kicked out of his Ivy League college, his girlfriend broke it off with him, and his friends abandoned him. The son's personality entirely changed, and he had trouble eating and sleeping. His life was ruined over this accusation, that turned out to be untrue. So it's necessary to be very careful about handling accusations, especially ones of such weight.

The accused attempts to defend their name by threatening a defamation ... case against anyone knowingly propagating the claims against their character.... Do tennis organizers take this chance?

I don't think they should.

Should a person be presumed innocent and treated as such until an accusing party can prove their guilt, or should a person be presumed guilty and treated as such until this person can prove they are innocent?

Should be held neither guilty nor not guilty. In most cases the best situation probably is to act as if the accusation never happened until the investigation turns up evidence in one stance or another. But again, different circumstances may warrant some precautions, and only very rarely (if ever) justify bannings.

 

[young grasshopper]

Accusations are far too easy to make, and thus should not hold weight unless they carry a proportional amount of evidence with them. "Innocent until proven guilty" is an incredibly important concept for maintaining an orderly society, and must be practiced both at the legal level and the social level.

 

[VodkaHaze]

There was a Reddit post from a father where he told the story of how a false **** accusation from his daughter against his son prompted him to inform the police on his son. His son was kicked out of his Ivy League college, his girlfriend broke it off with him, and his friends abandoned him. The son's personality entirely changed, and he had trouble eating and sleeping. His life was ruined over this accusation, that turned out to be untrue. So it's necessary to be very careful about handling accusations, especially ones of such weight.

Sadly, these types of scenarios are not uncommon. When men get falsely accused of crimes especially as horrific and nefarious as ****, that's their lives over. Even when they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they didn't do a thing, they still get treated like criminals. It's why I'm also sickened when you find articles that victimise the women in these cases, but it makes me glad to know that I live in a country where these types of lies don't go without legal repercussion.