Quote:
Originally Posted by PriscillaVanilla
I heard someone say that police don't arrest innocent people and if someone's arrested that means they are guilty.
Is this a common belief in our society?
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No. Once a suspect is found to have enough against him to take him to trial, his innocence is presumed until he is proven guilty.
But suspicion of a crime is enough to hold someone and question him. Holding a person who is suspect does have limits, and a suspect has legal protections available to him. If there's no evidence strong enough to hold him, he must be released.
But that does not mean arrest is always the presumption of innocence.
Arrest is actually a suspicion of guilt, but nothing more than a suspicion.
There are far fewer suspects than innocent witnesses in many crimes. Most suspects are never even held at all, because police have to suspect as many as possible. Most possibilities don't pan out when there are many witnesses.
In crimes that involve fewer people, it's much easier to determine who a witness is or not, and who is a likely suspect or not.
In many crimes, the guilty will admit to their crime readily. A speeding ticket, for example, is often not worth the fight of trying to prove innocence, especially when the driver is caught red-handed with a radar gun.
In a serious crime, the evidence often only points to one person, and can be so strong that any plea of innocence will be very hard to prove.
Most folks can understand these differences quite easily.
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