Jimmy Savile - guilty without trial - is it right or wrong?
CherryRose
Posts: 13,198 Forum Member
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Is it right to convict someone who is dead without a trial?
Although the amount of people who have come forward is vast with their claims regarding the conduct of the late Savile, the automatic assumption of guilt via the media and public has got me questioning if it right for us to make that assumption?
In this country you are innocent until proven guilty, Jimmy Savile has not been found guilty in a court of law however the public and media refer to this situtation as he is deemed to be guilty of what he has been accussed of.
Are we right to do that?
Although the amount of people who have come forward is vast with their claims regarding the conduct of the late Savile, the automatic assumption of guilt via the media and public has got me questioning if it right for us to make that assumption?
In this country you are innocent until proven guilty, Jimmy Savile has not been found guilty in a court of law however the public and media refer to this situtation as he is deemed to be guilty of what he has been accussed of.
Are we right to do that?
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Comments
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Except he's not been convicted.
In court you are innocent until proved guilty.
Hitler never faced trial, do you think he is thus completely innocent of genocide? (Scuze Godwin's Law).
I hear the press are still campaigning to have them watered down (although Leverson has sort of port that on hold)
I have to admit it makes me uneasy.
He is talked about everywhere as if it is a done deal. everyone on TV now calls him a paedophile and talk about how shocking it is.
If he was alive, it would be very different and libel laws would play a big part. People would be careful what they said and he would go to trial. He is dead and can't defend himself so it is open season - a double standard and hipocritical in that it would be very different if he was alive.
After my death, I wouldn't want my name dragged through mud like that unless and until it was proven in a court of law.
Although you make a fair point, Hitler was quite public about his crimes.
The difference is we have loads of proof of what Hitler did,not just a bunch of tabloid rumours.
Errr I think its gone way beyond rumours.
You really think he'd want to be alive to face this humiliation & ignominy?
He's lucky to be dead frankly...
Maybe if he hadn't threatened the people around him they might have had the courage to go public with their experiences/concerns while he was still alive. Who's to blame for that eh?
Savile was hardly secretive to be fair...
Even the dead? Do you want libel laws to extend to the dead?
To the fact that he was hardly secretive...
Given no trial (against JS) can take place we are in a difficult position.
The only thing we can do is wait to the enquiries finish and note the conclusion.
The existence or otherwise of consequences isn't what makes something right or wrong, though, is it?
It's LEGAL to say what you want about the dead, but does that mean it's not wrong?
I must admit, while I'm totally prepared to believe this stuff's true, fact-checking seems to have gone out of the window on a lot of it, and that makes me uneasy. "Lots of people said it" now seems to mean "it happened". I'm not saying it didn't- it almost certainly did- but legal or not, I think it's still wise to point out that these are claims and allegations, rather than proven facts. Just because it helps keep the two things separate, which is where they should be.
Of course, "unproven" doesn't mean the same as "didn't happen".
Has it though? A lot of people have 'said stuff' and the more people that say stuff the more seem to come forward. Anyway, beyond people 'saying stuff' I've yet to see anything that would constitute proof of any kind. The closest I've seen is video footage corroborating the fact that two people were on a set together in the 1970s.
If something isn't illegal people can do it regardless of whether its right or wrong.
It is much more than tabloid rumours, albeit it that's how it started
Oh, of course they can. Your assertion, however, was that "it's neither right or wrong", which isn't quite the same. Don't mistake law for ethics. There's obviously a huge crossover, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing.
You think.The problem is we have no idea of whether their is any proof or not.All we have,as far as we know, is circumstantial evidence and accusations and,while they may all be genuine,after 30+ years its questionable whether their would be enough actual evidence to convict him if he was alive.