Let’s Not Assume Guilt

In a scene that is repeated almost daily at the county courthouse, a criminal defense attorney faces a panel of potential jurors and asks whether they can weigh the evidence objectively and recognize that the prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt before earning a conviction.

“Will the simple fact that my client has been charged by the district attorney or that he is wearing jail clothing influence your vote?” the attorney might ask.

Usually, the answer from the prospective jurors is “no.” They accept, they are saying, the American tradition that says even the person accused of a most heinous, violent crime is to be considered innocent until proved guilty in a trial.

But do they? And do we in the public and we of the press follow that tenet as we form our opinions and do our work?

Modern technology and communications have made police work a sophisticated science. Most prosecutors today are too ethical to press cases they don’t truly believe in. So, it’s easy to assume that if a person is arrested by the police and charged by the district attorney, he or she must be guilty.

We may debate the guilt or innocence of John DeLorean or Mayor Roger Hedgecock in sophisticated, nonviolent criminal cases. But we’re unlikely to have much doubt about the defendant charged with murder--especially in a case like the throat-slash deaths of a mother and her child.

That’s why the case of Johnny Massingale hits us in the face like a bucket of cold water.

An indigent, illiterate drifter from Kentucky, the 30-year-old Massingale was released Jan. 4 after spending 10 months in jail charged with murder in the 1979 killings of Suzanne Jacobs and her 3-year-old son. Despite certain unsettling inconsistencies, sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors had what appeared to be substantial evidence that Massingale had committed the crimes.

But after recently charging David A. Lucas with other slayings of a similar style, they decided the evidence in the Jacobs case points more toward him.

There is no indication that the prosecution of Massingale was malicious or irresponsible. It was just a mistake.

And from that mistake comes the harsh reminder that neither law enforcement officials nor journalists nor any of the rest of us are omniscient or infallible.