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Innocent means that you did not commit the crime.
Not Guilty means that there was not enough evidence to determine that you did commit the crime.
There is a big difference between the two. In the US, we find defendants not guilty; this means that there wasn't enough evidence to detemine, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you did infact commit the crime. It doesn't mean your innocent (you still may very well have done it) it just means that your guilt couldn't be proven.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimf ... tween_not/

tomneal wrote:

Innocent means that you did not commit the crime.
Not Guilty means that there was not enough evidence to determine that you did commit the crime.
There is a big difference between the two. In the US, we find defendants not guilty; this means that there wasn't enough evidence to detemine, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you did infact commit the crime. It doesn't mean your innocent (you still may very well have done it) it just means that your guilt couldn't be proven.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimf ... tween_not/

Yeah, I understand the relative meaning of "innocent" as opposed to "not guilty". I'm just asking how you prove innocence in legal terms. You'd be trying to disprove a negative...... or something like that.

I think the only thing that can happen to get a verdict of innocent is to have the judge issue something like a "Declaration of Innocence" if the evidence for the defense destroys the prosecution's case.....not just casts sufficient doubt on it.

Not guilty is the same as innocent of the charge.
Innocent until proven guilty does not one thing for the person falsely accused, especially when the DA plays to the media about the charges. The Travis County DA had obvious political motivations for the indictment and tried to make a case for his prosecution in the media.

Both of these (politically motivated indictments and using the media to influence the people,) should be chargeable offenses. At the very least, any public official who uses his office to injure someone for political reasons should be removed from office. If these type of acts are allowed to stand, to remain without remedy, then there is no longer a possibility of justice for anyone.

vhauk wrote:Not guilty is the same as innocent of the charge.
Innocent until proven guilty does not one thing for the person falsely accused, especially when the DA plays to the media about the charges. The Travis County DA had obvious political motivations for the indictment and tried to make a case for his prosecution in the media.

Both of these (politically motivated indictments and using the media to influence the people,) should be chargeable offenses. At the very least, any public official who uses his office to injure someone for political reasons should be removed from office. If these type of acts are allowed to stand, to remain without remedy, then there is no longer a possibility of justice for anyone.

Not true. Legally there is no such verdict as innocent. I believe that was the point of tomneal's original post.
I agree with the remainder of your post.

Yes
That was the point
There should be some verdict available to the jury (or judge) that the DA should have to pay for the defense out of his budget.

vhauk wrote:Not guilty is the same as innocent of the charge.
Innocent until proven guilty does not one thing for the person falsely accused, especially when the DA plays to the media about the charges.

Actually, to the falsely accused, there is a world of difference between these two. We also now have a criminal verdict of actual innocence, at least at the appellate level.

You may remember that there was a political storm in the media a few years ago. A prisoner was set free from prison after many years. The court ruled he was not guilty and the DA decided not to retry the accused. Susan Combs was the comptroller and refused to make a payment under the restitution law. Her argument was that the law required the judge to rule that the case was overturned due to actual innocence and not just due to reasonable doubt. A lot of people thought she should have paid anyway.

And to keep this tied to the original subject, I will point out that Rick Perry was one of those who thought she should have ordered the payment It was one of the major disagreements between the two, around the time of the Amazon tax case (another point of disagreement between the two).

srothstein wrote:

vhauk wrote:Not guilty is the same as innocent of the charge.
Innocent until proven guilty does not one thing for the person falsely accused, especially when the DA plays to the media about the charges.

Actually, to the falsely accused, there is a world of difference between these two. We also now have a criminal verdict of actual innocence, at least at the appellate level.

You may remember that there was a political storm in the media a few years ago. A prisoner was set free from prison after many years. The court ruled he was not guilty and the DA decided not to retry the accused. Susan Combs was the comptroller and refused to make a payment under the restitution law. Her argument was that the law required the judge to rule that the case was overturned due to actual innocence and not just due to reasonable doubt. A lot of people thought she should have paid anyway.

And to keep this tied to the original subject, I will point out that Rick Perry was one of those who thought she should have ordered the payment It was one of the major disagreements between the two, around the time of the Amazon tax case (another point of disagreement between the two).

Steve - Thanks for your post. I did not realize that she was the comptroller at that time.

Not guilty as a verdict means that the prosecution did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the accused as charged. Innocent, in othe words. The thought here is that until the verdict, or a confession is given, the accused is innocent. Guilt cannot be asigned until a verdict is rendered. Hence, not guilty and innocent should be synonymous.

This has never been actually true in practice, unfortunately. I have been on several criminal juries, and each time I have been disturbed by the actual process by which an accused is tried.

The system is not perfect, it may even be broke, but it is so much better than the other systems out there in the world. But truly, I am terrified of ever having to be under our system' s authority as an accused.

Maybe I should use different terms:

Guilty
Not Guilty
The DA must pay the defenses legal bill out of the DA budget.

I agree that there should be a penalty for a DA who falsely accuses and prosecutes an innocent citizen. Legal fees are prohibitively expensive. This just might restrain DAs from frifoulous prosecutions.

Maybe then citizens would not have to defend themselves in court after defending themselves in life.

vhauk wrote:I agree that there should be a penalty for a DA who falsely accuses and prosecutes an innocent citizen. Legal fees are prohibitively expensive. This just might restrain DAs from frifoulous prosecutions.

Maybe then citizens would not have to defend themselves in court after defending themselves in life.

ain't gonna happen, da's gota make a name to show they are doing "something" to keep the public safe even is its wrong

There should be a process to remove liability protection from any lawyer who is pursuing cases using government funds (whether govt lawyer or lawyer hired by the govt). In addition, a process to recover money from the government or agency the lawyer was working for. There are already frivolous lawsuit regulations for normal civil cases.

I am not at all sure how to do this such that criminals/prisoners don't use it as a bludgeon to discourage prosecution.

I am not sure how it started that District Attorney was an elected position.
Since it is an elected position, then it becomes politics.
Making it a civil service type job might help remove some of the malicious prosecutions.

Been trying for years for loser pays on frivolous cases, but way too much cronyism going on with lawyers/legislators to get it approved. Needs to be changed to eliminate all the settling to avoid HUGE legal bills.

Many of the posts here are concerned about recovering legal bills. Of course they can be huge amounts of money.
One of the subjects that has not been addressed is the mental and physical toll on the person being prosecuted and their families.
Even if you have a lot of money, there are still plenty of other stresses from defending the lawsuit.
This is one reason that many innocent people plead guilty to crimes that they didn't commit.
After so much money, time, worry, stress and anger they just want it to all go away.