alt Hacker News> But given that no-one seems to seriously dispute that he did try to pay to have the guy killed,
It’s my understanding in the US that you are innocent until proven guilty, right? Therefore, he is indeed innocent of those crimes, since he was not proven guilty. Unless I’m missing something on how the US justice system works.
Replies
victorbjorklund • 01/22/2025
That is just the "legal" system. Not whether someone is morally guilty or not.
Hitler was never convicted of the holocaust in a court of law. Does that make him morally innocent? No.
Bin Ladin was never convicted of 9/11 in a court of law. Does that make him morally innocent? No.
Their comment wasn’t about what was legally right. I thought the part where they said something like “regardless of whether it is by courts doing things properly, by courts doing things improperly, or by some vigilante” made that clear enough?
Whether someone morally deserves a punishment for a crime depends on whether they actually did it, not on whether they are considered innocent in the eyes of the law.
Of course, I don’t generally support vigilantism , so I don’t think people should try to make other people get what they think the other people deserve as punishment. But, that doesn’t mean that people can’t deserve worse than the law prescribes, just that people shouldn’t like, try to deliver what they think the deserts are.