THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE IN THE AGE OF THE MEDIA TRIAL

The thought about innocence comes from the vagueness principle, which states the notion of innocence until guilt is proven through lawful judgment. The workload of the matter is vast; this probably comes from the fact that it is codified across many charters of law, i.e. provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Blackstone's Commentaries, and moral traditions established in virtually every democratic government of the world. In trying to settle the problem of the innocence presumption norm, the authors analyse the concept of media trial. The principle is somewhat challenged by the fact that the modern press creates a negative verdict for the perpetrator far before the court judgment has been delivered. Relevant legal theory is joined by relevant examples from the cases of Indian, American, and English traditions, as well as by reference to numerous statistics from the area of judicial psychology. The prison system features the fact that the majority of detainees in both the USA and India are people who have not been convicted at any point, whereas in the exoneration records, the same reasons lead to miscarriage of justice, such as wrongful accusations and confirmation bias. The figures below are taken from the relevant peer-reviewed articles and statistics from government sources.