NO - onus is on an accuser/victim to provide evidence of a crime having been committed. There is never any conclusive “proof” of anything. Both sides put forth their evidence, then a judge and/or jury decide whether or not the accused is guilty of a crime, and what the punishment should be. The phrase “burden of proof” really amounts to evidence, and testimony is a powerful form of evidence,
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Do you think 30+ women are lying? Serious question. I expect a serious answer.
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Serious answer: In the grand scheme of things, in the real world, It would take a non-trivial amount of money and even less time to get 30+ people to say something damning about just about anybody you like.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is a phrase written into our law for a damn good reason.
I have no further proof that he didn’t do anything than anyone else here has that he did, and people should start acting like it.
Do I think “30+ women are lying”? Bottom line: It doesn’t matter if I do or not.
This isn’t a court of law. We all get to form our own opinions of the truth behind stories in the news without needing to resort to trial by jury.
Do you think your proposed conspiracy theory is more likely than Cosby being a rapist?
Do you take an absolutist position of innocence on all legal cases until the jury returns a verdict? (you honestly don’t weigh the evidence in your own mind and form an opinion of your own?)
Do you think a woman accusing a man of rape is simply a case of her saying ‘he raped me’?
Have you read the statements made by any of the women involved? And if so, do you find them less trustworthy than Cosby? And if so, why?
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When your opinions amount to a conviction, let me know.
I never said anyone was anything less than entitled to their opinion, however that also cannot preclude me from identifying those opinions as noisome.
I’m concerned with facts, End of line.
I think you have a skewed idea of reality. Taking a bribe to accuse someone of a terrible crime is an extremely high risk behaviour that is almost certainly going to be caught in the long run. Offering such bribes to 30 people is also almost certainly going to be found out. If we are assuming that all of these people are willing to make false accusations of serious crimes for money, are we then assuming that after that their loyalty with lie infallibly with the person who bribed them, that they won’t recant and reveal the truth weeks, months or years later? That’s absolutely absurd. While normally I don’t make meritocratic arguments, I actually find it hard to believe that a person who is willing to subject themselves to such risk out of a personal vendetta against Cosby is likely to have the money this would require - they have very poor decision-making skills.
As I and others hand noted above, 30 different accusations spanning years from different women whose stories that they were at least with Cosby is incredibly damning evidence. The only reasonable defense against that evidence is that these women are involved in a conspiracy against Cosby. But that’s a pretty huge stretch.
30 women’s stories are better than DNA on a murder weapon - can’t you imagine a world in which someone’s DNA on a murder weapon got there by some roundabout means? Couldn’t someone have been bribed to put it there? Couldn’t people alter video? Couldn’t experts be bribed to say it wasn’t altered? What possible evidence could there be that anyone did anything if we say, “Well, some rich person could have just framed them up”?
There is a reason why there are high standards for criminal courts, but there is also a very good reason why people don’t apply those standards in their everyday life to judge the character of those around them. When I get an automated call with “important information about my credit card account” I am pretty sure it’s a scam even though I completely lack physical evidence - how unjust of me! Even in a court, though, the standard is only “beyond a reasonable doubt,” not, “Socrates would agree that we know two things: that we know nothing and that Cosby is guilty.”
Spin it any way you want. Your point is that 30 women’s stories of being assaulted count for nothing, That’s a stupid point, almost certainly born of misogyny (note, I do not have proof that you think less of women than you do of men - how unjust of me again!).
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Well, you’re wrong. But it’s interesting to note how quickly the misogyny horn got blown.
I pity you.
Likewise!
(A very strong rebuttal of my point, by the way)
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Say “hi” to Sark for us!
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What facts would be enough for you in this case? A video of a rape? Would anything else suffice?
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We’re not just talking about “getting 30+ people to say something damning.” We’re talking about finding at least 30 women who were
- Able to name times and places when these attacks could have plausibly taken place
- Willing to commit perjury and expose themselves to potentially devastating defamation lawsuits and criminal charges
- Willing to destroy the life of an innocent man with no remorse
- Able to successfully hide any evidence that they had received any money or other incentive for lying
- Willing and able to stick to these stories for years, likely the rest of their lives
- All credible witnesses (i.e. none with a history of making similar accusations)
- Unwilling to expose the conspiracy for even more money (after all, anyone willing to tell a lie for a trivial amount of money would surely be willing to expose said lie for a NON-trivial amount of money, wouldn’t you think?)
And remember, every single woman that the conspirators try to enlist in this smear campaign has to both A) accept the offer and B) stick to her story or the whole thing falls apart. All it takes is one credible witness telling the press “these shadowy figures offered me a bribe to say that Cosby raped me” and it all comes tumbling down.
If you are seriously proposing the above scenario as even remotely likely then you must either have an irrational faith in Bill Cosby or a pathological distrust of women. We’re approaching “Moon Landing Hoax” levels of paranoia here and no one has even suggested a decent motive for trying to pull it off.
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Scottish Law has a third verdict option…
Of course, that’s an unusually dispassionate position to take in a case you have any interest in outside of a jury in a courtroom. And why I asked the unanswered questions above.
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I linked to a statistical model that shows that, if we treat people merely as pieces of evidence, the only possible defense of Cosby is a conspiracy. I asked you several questions (e.g. what proof could exist if we posit that anything could be a frame-up by a rich guy?) and you decided to answer “I pity you.” @Brainspore outlines that extreme implausibility of the scenario you are proposing in great detail. You’ve got nothing but a bald assertion that such a thing would be easy to cook up.
Please quote where I did this, if you are so interested in facts.
I specifically addressed the issue of court-of-law vs. discussion-on-BBS standards of proof. If your only point is that Cosby is not legally guilty of sexual assault, then you are simply, 100% correct. In fact, you don’t go far enough. You say that he isn’t guilty legally until facts are provided, but in reality he isn’t guilty legally until he is found guilty in a court. We could have video evidence of him raping someone and he still wouldn’t be legally guilty - facts don’t matter to legal guilt. I challenge you to find anyone who disagrees.
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Has the post this was replying to been deleted?
Demonstrably this is not true.
Cosby has not been found guilty of anything in a court of law. But he’s definitely suffering real consequences as a result of people’s personal opinion of his guilt. Don’t be so quick to write off the court of public opinion.
It looks like it was. Almost the whole thing is reproduced in my reply, though, for your entertainment and amazement (I think left out a sentence or two from that first bit where @Jemak told me, at greater length, how foolish I was). I have to say that I’m a little bit sad for it to end, but the good news is that I think we can all easily imagine what @Jemak’s response would be to anything we say, so we can continue having the discussion in our own heads, should we choose.
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This entire thread is a terrific reason why the “court of public opinion” should be written off. Because all it amounts to people who can say or believe anything they please with no checks on their logic or how completely absurd their world-view is due to any poor-me lenses they see it through or otherwise. You have free speech, and that’s awesome. But there’s a damn good reason that saying anything you please should not be accepted as fact until fully verified. Don’t believe everything you think. False accusations happen. Bandwagoning because individuals believe they have something to gain, happens. Owing any validity to the public’s opinion at large equaling fact is dubious at best and is exactly what is ruining our society at little more each day at worst.
When ignorant, public voices like @anon50609448 get more credibility than a court of law, just because it is noisier, (or crying misogyny), all hope for an intelligent future is completely lost.
This is not a question of people trusting public opinion over a legal trial, because there hasn’t been a trial, and owing to statute of limitations in most cases there can’t. It’s a question of people trusting many women’s accounts over the evidence-free presumption that it’s all just lies.
But sure, that’s slowly ruining our society. Not, say, the common occurrence of rape and how rarely anyone faces any consequences for it. That’s something you’re entirely willing to let slide, by introducing this “even multiple witness testimony is not evidence” rule. That’s never even been a legal standard; if you cared to check, you’d find it was discredited in detail before you even joined the thread.
But hey, just because you’ve invented a nonsense standard to ignore women who said they were raped, and are happy to slander them by claiming dozens might all be liars without evidence, doesn’t mean you’re misogynist! Not at all. It would be wrong to imagine anything but the most pure motives for what you say.
I’m happy to hear you think there is no hope for an “intelligent” future, because the standards you have for that are disgusting. I’ll hold out for the future where rape is taken more seriously than paranoid conspiracy theories.
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We are acting like it. Most of us, anyway, are acting like it by acknowledging that proof is a virtually impossible standard to reach, and making our decisions based on the best information we can come by.
We’re not locking him up because of our decision. We’re deciding how we are going to react to it, including deciding whether we will tell others we believe it, or why it’s silly to act like it didn’t happen, whether we want to materially support the man by encouraging the success of his comedy tour.
You keep dodging the question about whether you believe 30 women are lying. You say they could be, of course, but you seem to be unwilling to take a position about it. Fair enough, maybe you really are truly a “I will not consider either possibility until there’s 100% proof one way or the other” type of guy.
So, let me ask you this instead… are you talking to anyone who claims these 30 women are possibly lying and pointing out that there’s no proof that any of them are lying? You don’t seem to be doing so here, so how about elsewhere? Why are you here, moved to defend one side in a two-sided (more like 32 sided, really) dispute in an issue where you refuse to take a position on it? Doesn’t it take a lot of energy you could more productively use elsewhere, if you’re really not going to let anything short of full-on proof affect you?
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Do me a favor and point out please where I specifically stated at any point that I personally believed anyone was a liar.
Just like you have no proof of that, nobody here has any proof of guilt or innocence in this case; and that has nothing to do with your skewed feminist agenda.
Of course you didn’t say anyone was a liar, just that we need to seriously consider the likelihood that the dozens of them are all lying, despite there not being anything to suggest it and all sorts of reasons to think otherwise. That’s not insulting anyone’s credibility, right? It’s just asking questions™.
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