Is guilty until proven innocent really a bad thing?

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As soon as you turned on the ignition key to drive you argument, you drove your argument right into a ditch and broke your axel. No need for me to read further.

You said "innocent till proven guilty is based on the assumption that most human beings are good".

It is NOT based upon that at all. In fact, if anything, its based upon the opposite. Its based upon the notion the individuals, and organizations, and above all...governments, are bad, and might abuse the justice system for personal gain or corporate gain, or for state tyranny.

If it were flipped to "guilty until proven innocent" then I could accuse you of all kinds of things, and get you thrown in jail for child molestation, murder, whatever. You would be forced to prove your innocence while you were in jail and awaiting trial. And if you ...just happened to be my competitor and owned the rival hardware store in town my business could thrive while yours would go under in your managerial absence.

Some people who got the death penalty turned out to be innocent, which is probably why we don't have the death penalty in Canada. But sometimes I think spending weeks or even years in prison for a crime you didn't commit would be a lot worse. It would be beyond my worst nightmares.

I once saw a young man suspected of murdering his sister on a TV documentary make a false confession that he committed the crime. He was clearly emotionally distraught, but he was lied to about going to prison if he confessed. It was hard to watch. Fortunately the real killer was caught not long afterwards.

Of course, when a person's innocence of a horrific crime is ambiguous and they act like a huge jerk who seems to be almost enjoying all the media presentation, it's hard to feel sorry for them at all.

Correct. We've established two things in this thread so far:

1) Criminal law is based on "innocent until proven guilty" for the reasons you list and obviously for good reason.
2) Civil law, the "court of public opinion" and the "media" base on "guilty until proven innocent". Absolutely counter to innocent until proven guilty.

Yes.

And arguably the second isn't necessarily unfair. Depends.

If I were in front of the US Senate being interviewed for my prospective new job as a justice of the Supreme Court, and if people came out of the woodwork saying that I had at one point in my life been a dealer and sold crystal meth to school kids, and lets say the statute of limitations had not run out yet then that would raise two issues (a) am I good enough to serve on the SC?, and (b) should I be arrested and tossed into the slammer?

For the latter "innocent til proven quilty" should apply to guard against me being unjustly imprisoned. But someone could argue that just the whiff of that kind of scandal should be enough to bar me from that kind of high office, and that its guilty until proven innocent (and maybe even "too guilty to serve even IF proven innocent"). Not sure I agree. But it would be a reasonable opinion for someone to have.

And when they get let out they still have a record and most they get is few thousand dollars to compensate for their time falsely imprisoned. They life is ruined to say nothing of the emotional trama and they may been made bad by the prison system.

Not that it compensates for the years lost----but some people have been known to get millions in lawsuits.

There could be some positives to guilt by unproven accusation in relation to political appointments I suppose. I do believe "choir boys/girls" do exist in the world albeit in an extremely small minority. I don't think I have a problem with the idea of a future where the only type of person that could/should be appointed to public office is one who is literally squeaky clean since early childhood. I don't dismiss such a notion as I've heard some do: "Yeah right. Everybody has done some bad stuff. With an impossible standard like that, no one would be fit for politics. That's unrealistic." I don't agree. There are rare people (I'm not one of them) that are basically "saints". Would that be a bad thing if our future governments were run only by those who are saintly?

It seems to me that we have been operating on the Napoleonic Code this way for hundreds of years, with respect to African Americans. So to determine how it would work, it should be necessary to look at the outcomes of such cases, especially in the southern United States. The phony charges and the executions often occurred on the very same day.

Also, anyone with Aspergers is very familiar with the social version of that system. If you went to a public school, perhaps you can relate. We tended to be accused of all kinds of things (being homosexual, being stalkers, being threatening) without proof which accusations, if we are "weird enough," will be believed by nearly everyone. Being gaslighted is what that feels like. There is nothing new about trial by mob, but the right to require the actual proof of charges by the government is something less popular people highly value.

The presumption of innocence does not appear to have an altruistic purpose, but rather a purpose to grant powers to individuals over the state, which otherwise enjoys an overwhelming advantage. As the Sixth Amendment puts this, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense." Of course these are never social rights you'd be granted in high school; they only are available when the government accuses you of wrongdoing or unpopularity.