I was watching a video on Willem Dafoe on his iconic roles, and his passion to craft and life, and positivity, exudes from him immensely. In that video, I am surprised he remembers from which of his movies the lines came from. It made me love him more as an actor because he loves life and his job.
But then during the interview, I remembered too when I watched Kevin Spacey’s interview before, admiring him and it turned out he is a creep. I was telling to myself about Willem Dafoe “please don’t be a creep, please don’t be a creep.”
Willem seems like a genuinely nice guy though but I hope I don’t get proven wrong!
Edit: clarified the title
A jury being unable to be sure of guilt beyond reasonable doubt does not mean he is innocent beyond all reasonable doubt.
How many people do you need to come forward before you believe them? Is the number of men required more or less than the number of women required? Do teenagers count double or not at all? Or does the number depend entirely on the quality of their legal defence and the amount of physical evidence they left behind?
It’s not a numbers thing, it’s a facts thing. That’s just how criminal justice works (or is supposed to). So to address your second paragraph―the number of people and whether they are men, women, or otherwise is entirely irrelevant. If someone can be proven to have done wrong, they did wrong, period. I’m not stating I agree or disagree with his acquittal, I was just making sure I hadn’t missed some news that he had, in fact, been found guilty. I’m well aware that wealthy people and, in particular, powerful men get unfair advantages in the criminal justice system.
That is not how criminal justice is supposed to work. Scottish law has attempted to make it work a little bit like that but it’s not a good solution.
There is no mirror image. A guilty verdict is (supposed to be) beyond reasonable doubt. A not guilty verdict is everything else. You’re ignoring the missing middle and deciding that it has been shown beyond reasonable doubt that 16 young men have all told the same lie about a powerful person for <reasons>.
You’re entitled to whatever opinion you want to have about Spacey. But if your opinion is based on the idea that a not guilty verdict means innocent beyond reasonable doubt, then your opinion is based on a total misunderstanding of the way the legal system works.