Awful lot of filler and dramatic crescendos. Probably could have cut the word count in half. I also don't see the point in this trend of public character assassination in lieu of criminal charges. If someone raped you in the ass, and you're willing to publicize it on Twitter and Facebook and The Verge, file a criminal charge instead. But no, the real justice is getting their Twitter account stripped of it's verified status! Social media justice is just a bad joke.
A victim of a crime has the right to pursue justice in whichever way they please, as long as it's legal. Ruining someone's reputation is perfectly legal, last I checked.
I thought, that we as society surrender our right to judge and punish criminal matters to the court, in exchange for a fair trial for each and everyone of us.
Just the punishing is reserved for the legal system.
For instance, at least in the US, we have pretty strong free speech laws, so you can publicly state opinions about almost anything, such things aren't reserved for courts.
No. We give up the right to use violence to the court system. Not justice in general. Ruining a rapist's reputation is a perfectly fine way to achieve justice, if that's what the victim desires.
Other ways to achieve justice outside the court system include protests, strikes, civil disobedience and so forth.
The problem is that while I can admit that most of the victims are indeed victims. It is also possible that some might be accused infairly or inaccurately.So I would not really call it a fine way.
The general notion of "innocent until proven guilty" is simplistic even when applied to just the legal system. Even in criminal court you only have to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. You do not have to "prove" guilt to the same degree of confidence as, say, the Higgs boson.
This means that a small number of innocent people are convicted every year. This is unfortunate, but less bad than the alternative — the only way to guarantee no false positives is to never convict anyone.
The legal system, like any other justice system, is about finding an appropriate balance between false negatives and false positives.
when we talk about proven in the empiric sense a margin of error is always expected. but what "innocent until proven guilty" guarantees is that best efforts were made to make sure that someone is really guilty. Trial by social media cannot reasonably offer such guarantees.
Also, I presume you would agree that the police and by extension the court have better means than your average newspaper for determining guilt.
I don't think victims' desires are paramount in any way, regarding the perpetrator, other than their security and privacy. Some victims desire retribution. Others want to extend forgiveness. Neither of these things should be relevant to the criminal justice system.
Only a court can order someone incarcerated or stripped of their assets. As an individual you're perfectly free to shun someone who you think is guilty of atrocious behavior even if they haven't been convicted.
cf. libel and slander, and consider that in the United States and many (but not all) societies, a person accused of a crime is to be considered innocent (in a legal context) until found guilty in a court of law (by jury or bench trial).
Truth is the gold standard defense against slander and libel.
So if someone is raped, they are pretty safe calling the attacker a rapist, they just can't call them a convicted rapist until a court has decided that.
It's not always safe. I sympathize with real victims, but some people abuse the principle to influence public opinion in hopes of driving things toward a big monetary settlement in civil court. A personal friend was falsely accused of sexually abusing a minor, really nasty accusations, changed his life forever even though he was/is innocent. An organization that champions the victims of such crimes went all out, and together with the alleged victim's parents slimed him hard, publicly and repeatedly, over a year+ while the thing wound its way through the courts; they were very careful to avoid use of the word "convicted." The press gave the slimeballs all sorts of coverage, as it was a noteworthy case. The criminal case was tossed, with harsh words from the judge for the prosecution, the alleged victim's civil case evaporated, and my friend sued the slimeballs in federal court. The result was the utter obliteration of the organization that slimed him, they are now defunct for all intents and purposes. My friend's suit made claims of injury by libel and slander, and conspiracy to commit the same.
Looking at it from a 3rd party's point of view, the if is very much in question. So, flipping it around, though this may sound cynical, I would caution anyone about making what are essentially public accusations. They had better be prepared for a legal backlash, and they had better have bulletproof evidence.
I spoke (politely) with the guy who ran the organization that publicly went after my friend — I think he genuinely considered what he was doing to be legally safe, and I also think he was convinced my friend was guilty. His livelihood is now in tatters.
I still don't understand why you felt the need to reply about this to my comment about victims. I wasn't talking about false accusations or third parties, and it isn't a long or complicated comment.
I intended my reply as a pointed cautionary tale — understanding full well you had in mind true victims — for those who may misunderstand what's involved and what's at stake regarding both accused and accuser and so may pursue a regrettable course. Sadly, from a 3rd party's point of view, it's difficult today to distinguish true victims from false accusers.
No you don't need that. The OTHER party needs to have bulletproof evidence, because the accuser is innocent until proven guilty.
If something is true, then you should never ever ever be afraid to say the truth. Go public with your true accusations, and then force the other side to sue you.
Because if you are telling the truth, then you will win, because the other side can't have evidence that you are lying, because the evidence doesn't exist.
It is basically impossible to get in legal trouble for libel, if you know that what you are saying is true.
You are innocent of libel and slander until proven guilt.
If someone publicly accusing another person of a crime, the accuser is innocent of slander and libel unless you 100% prove that they are being malicious.
It is completely within your right to show evidence to the world and someone should not ever get in trouble with the law if everything that they have presented is true.
The only way you can convict someone of slander is if you prove that they were lying. Good luck doing that, because you almost certainly won't succeed.
Rape is traumatizing and the criminal prosecution process is not helpful in letting the victim recover. Imagine being told to recount the events in front of strangers countless times, while one party's job is to make anything you say doubtful and convince others you're wrong to be traumatized. At least with social media you only have to write it out once.
It's a strange sort of idealism that denies the victims of sexual abuse the agency to make their own decisions about how to relate those abuses to their peers.
Thank you! I was about to say the exact same thing. First the act of rape takes away the victim's agency. Then random commenters on this site are presumptuous enough to try and take it away as well.
Well to each his ideals and his priority of ideals.
I for one think that:
* social ostracisation is a form of punishment.
* It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
* social media in most cases are worse at determining
guilt than the justice system.
and view that:
- social media and public opinion in general have
favored the accused in the past( victim blaming,..)
and as an overcorrecting favors the accuser now. In
both cases such a system leads to unfairness and
unregulated punishment.
These 3 ideals and one experience lead me to prefer a world where all crimes no matter their nature are decided on by court. if that's strange, well I'm strange.
Although, I'd like to say that in this idealised situation the victim is free to relate those abuses in his closed social circle and to the public after the judgment is made
If I understood the article, he has confessed to this behavior, there are many victims with similar stories, and corroborating evidence. I agree he should have a trial and a criminal conviction, but reporting the abundance of evidence that a person is a serial rapist hardly strikes me as "character assassination."
What's especially troubling for me is that this was apparently known, by some, for a long time, and nothing effective was done to deter this person from committing additional rapes.
People keep on blaming women, asking "why didn't she come forward earlier". Simultaneously, many women HAVE gone to the police and the police have ignored them. Often times, cases where women came to the police and were ignored come to light only after many years. Don't you think that these maters should be solved in public so that at least it is publicly known that an accusation has been made?
That's absolutely not how reputation works. Your logic is easily flipped onto its back: if they're lying, they're doing horrific damage to him. Why is he not suing?
We know why he's not suing, and that's why he's finished.
>Don't you think that these maters should be solved in public so that at least it is publicly known that an accusation has been made?
Ideally, no, it would be settled in courts so that unsubstantiated allegations wouldn't damage the reputations of any innocents accused.
What I would like to see in public is all of these cases the police are ignoring and those investigators brought to task, because they are presumably the root of the rot in the legal system which makes it such that the only perceivable route of justice is instead through the court of public opinion. I fail to understand why this isn't the primary political thrust of activists regarding this issue, seeing as that's the part of this equation addressable by public policy.
Loss of trust and faith in the legal system is deadly to a society.. with that restored, these women would have justice, the perpetrators would be in jail where they belong, and the critics who call "witch hunt" wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
There is no way to substantiated he said she said only two of us after party rape accusation. Especially not when accusers are not stereotype of modest lady. Just about the only way is if multiple events collect and the stories match - effectively becoming they said he said.
It would be cool if justice system could wave magical wand and know for sure what happened behind closed doors. They can't.
Corndoge below has been downvoted so badly that I can no longer reply, but he does have a point: the proper place to solve this is through the courts, not through the press.
> the proper place to solve this is through the courts
Solve what? The question of whether he should be imprisoned or face other legal penalties, yes. But it's a mistake to conflate that with dealings with Marquis-Boire in general.
Several comments in this thread seem to purport that we shouldn't say or assume anything about the truth of the matter until he is proven guilty in a court of law.
That's a really ridiculous standard, for a few reasons:
- The standard of proof in a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is a very high bar to meet. (FWIW, I think it meets it in this case). We made it that high because we would rather a guilty person walk free than put an innocent person in jail. The costs of you and I incorrectly choosing not to associate with someone are far lower. There are other standards for guilt in other cases, such as "more probable than not" in civil trials.
- A prosecutor may believe a crime has occurred but decline to bring a case for a number of reasons (limited budget, jurisdiction, statute of limitations, difficulty or unreliability of evidence, because they think they don't have a good chance to win)
- We make decisions all the time about who we'll partner with, who we hire, who we fire, based on standards far lower than this. In general it's not a crime to be an asshole but you'd never say I should wait until it's proven in court before deciding not to hire one.
There's more than enough evidence about this person specifically, and in most cases, for me/you to feel fine never associating with this person, or working with an organization he's involved with, ever again, even if a court of law never gets involved.
I would argue that, it's a high bar to meet to convict a guilty person. But the lowest possible bar to avoid convicting innocent people. At least in theory.
That is reasonable for individuals. But it's on here, in Google, lots of other sites -- millions of people who had never heard of him now form an opinion of him based on this article (or just the comments, or the headline). It's probably career destroying.
That's in effect more like jail time than like some individuals shunning him.
I'm not sure that I follow. My point is that credible allegations of repeated rape and sexual assault should be career destroying even if they are not met with a guilty sentence in a court of law. I could not in good conscience let this person near my coworkers or colleagues for fear for their own physical safety. I don't need a court to send him to jail to make that assessment.
A career is not a right. The ability to access food, water, and shelter—life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness—are rights. I hope he gets a job and a roof over his head. I don't hope he gets any more glowing profiles in the media.
There are plenty of careers I'm more worried about than his, starting with those of his victims, and probably continuing to those who could have been famous hackers were it not for the accidents of their birth.
No, there is no right to a fair "trial by media". Quite the opposite in fact: restricting the media to a government-defined standard of "fair" would infringe upon a free press. In general, the free press is most important when it is reporting on a legal situation that opposes the government's narrative.
The right about trials is about a fair trial by the government, and is a check on the government's power to punish.
NO, I disagree the right of a fair trial holds regardless of the system. it's about the accused not the system. otherwise lynch mobs would be justified.
A lynch mob is not justified because a lynch mob goes on to enact punishment, usually via hanging, which is murder.
If you are using the word "lynch mob" in a rhetorical way to refer to people who are not depriving you of life, liberty, or property, arguments about actual lynch mobs do not apply. A so-called "lynch mob" that merely has opinions about you and does not do anything to you is not unjust any more than a high school mock trial club is unjust. A so-called "lynch mob" that has opinions about you and goes on to do entirely legal things, like exert their free speech rights to publish their opinions about you, is not unjust, either.
responding now might be inappropriate but for the record: one of the main premises of my response is that public ostracization is used as a form of punishment. ( I stated if in one of the previous comments).
historical data support my claim as wikipedia points:
"Public humiliation is the dishonoring showcase of a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of punishment in former times, and is still practiced by different means in the modern era."
If you commit or admit to crimes in a non-privileged context (when talking to your therapist, doctor, lawyer, chaplain) then you have to deal with whatever consequences ensue. Nobody owes you discretion.
What about the careers of those abused by him? I'm sure the social shun and stigma of being a sexual abuse victim can be more career-destroying than that of being the perpetrator. Just look at POTUS.
One problem with this type of "trial by media" is that the bar for convicting someone is set quite arbitrarily, and is influenced more by rhetoric and media attention than hearing of all parties involved and carefully weighing evidence (not saying that necessarily applies to this particular story).
Also note that published stories like these are a vastly different ballgame than the usual person-to-person type of gossip that affects partnering and hiring choices.
A civil suit is another scenario where people are supposed to carefully weigh evidence under oath, yet no one says “I am withholding judgment until a preponderance of the evidence is in favor of guilt.”
So, if someone comes along, who has been seen entering a closed room alone with you, and claims to have been raped repeatedly by you - should we stop associating with you? If a previously consensual encounter is later claimed to be non-consensual, should we ensure that you never get a job again in the tech industry?
Perhaps "convicted in court" is a too high of bar to you, but given the fact that people do lie about being sexually assaulted, perhaps the bar of "being accused means you did it" is a bit too low.
Ultimately it's up to each individual to decide the proper position of their bar, and perhaps this guy did indeed do it (personally, I don't care)... but the current trend of taking the accusers word as an actionable truth is troubling.
> perhaps this guy did indeed do it (personally, I don't care)
You might want to elaborate on this - it sounds like you don't care even if you think someone is a rapist, but I hope that's not your position? That's a really low bar.
Acting on information is not the same as believing it. You can act on something while still maintaining the possibility the information is wrong. Even a 51% probability can be acted on to good effect sometimes.
"There's more than enough evidence about this person specifically, and in most cases, for me/you to feel fine never associating with this person, or working with an organization he's involved with, ever again, even if a court of law never gets involved".
Not least of all, written admission of crime by the accused himself, in addition to corroboration of several incidents of assault by the news outlet. How is the question of innocence is still being bandied when the accused has already admitted his guilt?!! Equally absurd are the futile attempts to foist standards of criminal courts on that of public opinion despite the significant differences between both systems that you noted.
People falsely assume that that standard is one of absolute scientific certainty. It is not. Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt simply means that no reasonable person would come to any other conclusion than that of guilt.
To assume that guilt beyond any reasonable doubt as an absolute, scientific and completely infallible standard demonstrates an unfamiliarity with the legal system. The system may be flawed and cases may or may prosecuted for the reasons that were mentioned but many of those reasons like available resources have little if anything to do with the standard of proof that must be brought to trial.
Individuals can be prosecuted on very paltry evidence and even convicted if reasonable people find that evidence to be sufficient.
To believe that any lower standard of proof is needed to prosecute individuals is to pander to mob mentality that just because most people want to find someone guilty means we should find them guilty.
This burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt is set in place precisely to avoid such legal lynching proceedings
The gp never made this assumption, you're making it for them.
It's still not the same standard as the one society needs. The state wields a big hammer, and such it has relatively high standards. Us, individual society members, wield a tiny mallet, and as such we should feel more free to wield that than the state does. As the gp notes, we already do in many cases.
The courts should really be the last resort for this stuff; society should be dealing with it cleanly before it ever gets there.
I never claimed the Gp made any assumption to begin with. Beyond any reasonable doubt means precisely that. It can vary from person to person and from group to group. The state is indeed very powerful compared to the individual. But the mighty hammer you speak of simply implies that the state can bring more resources to bear when prosecuting. This only means in principle that the state can drag a trial longer (and from which we are protected by the right to a speedy trial) or that they can expend more effort gathering evidence against an accused.
Your argument about individual members of society however is, with respect, flawed. The masses of society, when all working towards a common goal are not tiny droplets in the pond but indeed the mighty torrent that can sweep away even so powerful an entity as the state. To advocate for a lower standard of evidence based on the fact that "everyone knows he is guilty" is, as mentioned, to advocate for a trial system based on mob mentality. Furthermore, public opinion can can be easily swayed by what is reported to it and I will spare this thread the question of the media or powerful individuals like Trump or Russia or Clinton etc using the media to subvert public opinion.
The system again may not be perfect but it is there to protect not only from the might of the state but also from the dictatorship of the masses which may, unlike the court system, have their own reasons for convicting someone, reasons which may not even have anything to do with the actual matter. This is even more problematic as the court system is at least subject to review and appeal whereas the masses have absolutely no check on them.
I am hoping more of those involved in technology come forward. I've heard horrible stories from others, and tech isn't immune to this national cleaning house that is long overdue.
Innocent until proven guilty (in a court of law) has been put to the test and found lacking in the current wave of revelations. The main reason for this seems to be that too many appeal institutions have been protecting perps, out of some notion that such abuse is not important enough (or something!). Complaints have not been taken sufficiently seriously to start serious investigations leading to serious consequences. This is the situation which actually legitimizes public shaming of the perps, and which will allow victims (women mostly) to get a fairer hearing moving forwards, and not continue to be told to keep quiet and endure, or worse. And so we can hopefully expect to return to upholding 'innocent until proven guilty' once these (seemingly new) moral standards have taken hold even in places of authority. Because that is one of the hallmarks of a civilized society.
It's also important to remember that innocent until proven guilty is a check on the otherwise unchecked, absolute, and final power of the state depriving a citizen of their fundamental rights by imprisoning them. If you are not a state, it may well still be a good ideal, but it's not nearly as binding on you—in much the same way that e.g. free speech is also a good ideal for individuals and companies but you are not obligated to avoid having opinions on the content of speech the way the state is.
Obviously, but the idea that we can only have one standard or the other seems like a false dichotomy. Maybe we should be looking at how to take a more Bayesian approach to legal decision-making.
Sure. The legal system does sort of support that - the standard of evidence in a criminal trial is a lot higher than in a civil suit. It's quite possible to be in a situation where for some reason the government cannot punish you for a crime (maybe failure to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, maybe expiry of the statute of limitations, which is also a check on the government's power), but someone can publish that you have committed a crime, and another suit will decide that what they've said is true enough to avoid them having libeled you. Or they can find you in breach of a contract where you said you wouldn't do what you did, etc.
(My understanding is that this is basically why you sometimes see contracts banning illegal behavior. It's hard to prove illegal behavior to the extent required to throw you in prison, and that's a good thing, but it's easier to find you in breach of contract.)
Agreed. Not sure if you read my comment to the end, but that's more or less my position too. As well as the broad public. So when this still happens, there must be a reason for it. The theory of why is the essence of my comment above.
"In many states, presumption of innocence is a legal right of the accused in a criminal trial, and it is an international human right under the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights"
I think when you start opposing human rights you cross into fascism territory.
Agreed, it's an important principle. But, as with many (all?) important principles, there are situations, contexts and exceptions that will cause them to yield, if only temporarily. And in this specific case I think you might find that the circumstance far from fascist, if not the exact opposite. Please note we are not talking about relaxing any burden of proof in courts of law, this is about publishing accusations of possible criminal misconduct in media. It's my conviction that this is a morally defensible way, maybe the only way, to imprint on leaders in business and elsewhere that these issues are more important than they (obviously) used to think. But it can get out of hand, granted.
Something that gives me hope in the recent wave of sexual assault revelations is that I think we are getting closer to a point where victims are getting more comfortable reporting what has happened. As long as this trend continues this will allow opportunity for the justice system to actually work as intended because victims might feel comfortable enough to report what has happened before the statute of limitations has expired.
85 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadFor instance, at least in the US, we have pretty strong free speech laws, so you can publicly state opinions about almost anything, such things aren't reserved for courts.
And you can be sure that The Verge had a lawyer look at this piece.
Other ways to achieve justice outside the court system include protests, strikes, civil disobedience and so forth.
This means that a small number of innocent people are convicted every year. This is unfortunate, but less bad than the alternative — the only way to guarantee no false positives is to never convict anyone.
The legal system, like any other justice system, is about finding an appropriate balance between false negatives and false positives.
Also, I presume you would agree that the police and by extension the court have better means than your average newspaper for determining guilt.
I was raped 10 years ago when I was a teen. There is no evidence of the crime. No court is going to convict my rapist.
In the US, truth is an absolute defense against libel and slander.
So if someone is raped, they are pretty safe calling the attacker a rapist, they just can't call them a convicted rapist until a court has decided that.
I spoke (politely) with the guy who ran the organization that publicly went after my friend — I think he genuinely considered what he was doing to be legally safe, and I also think he was convinced my friend was guilty. His livelihood is now in tatters.
No you don't need that. The OTHER party needs to have bulletproof evidence, because the accuser is innocent until proven guilty.
If something is true, then you should never ever ever be afraid to say the truth. Go public with your true accusations, and then force the other side to sue you.
Because if you are telling the truth, then you will win, because the other side can't have evidence that you are lying, because the evidence doesn't exist.
It is basically impossible to get in legal trouble for libel, if you know that what you are saying is true.
You are innocent of libel and slander until proven guilt.
If someone publicly accusing another person of a crime, the accuser is innocent of slander and libel unless you 100% prove that they are being malicious.
It is completely within your right to show evidence to the world and someone should not ever get in trouble with the law if everything that they have presented is true.
The only way you can convict someone of slander is if you prove that they were lying. Good luck doing that, because you almost certainly won't succeed.
I for one think that:
These 3 ideals and one experience lead me to prefer a world where all crimes no matter their nature are decided on by court. if that's strange, well I'm strange.Although, I'd like to say that in this idealised situation the victim is free to relate those abuses in his closed social circle and to the public after the judgment is made
What's especially troubling for me is that this was apparently known, by some, for a long time, and nothing effective was done to deter this person from committing additional rapes.
We know why he's not suing, and that's why he's finished.
Ideally, no, it would be settled in courts so that unsubstantiated allegations wouldn't damage the reputations of any innocents accused.
What I would like to see in public is all of these cases the police are ignoring and those investigators brought to task, because they are presumably the root of the rot in the legal system which makes it such that the only perceivable route of justice is instead through the court of public opinion. I fail to understand why this isn't the primary political thrust of activists regarding this issue, seeing as that's the part of this equation addressable by public policy.
Loss of trust and faith in the legal system is deadly to a society.. with that restored, these women would have justice, the perpetrators would be in jail where they belong, and the critics who call "witch hunt" wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Ok, but how about society fixes that first before they are allowed to say what ways women can or cannot have justice?
It would be cool if justice system could wave magical wand and know for sure what happened behind closed doors. They can't.
Solve what? The question of whether he should be imprisoned or face other legal penalties, yes. But it's a mistake to conflate that with dealings with Marquis-Boire in general.
That's a really ridiculous standard, for a few reasons:
- The standard of proof in a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is a very high bar to meet. (FWIW, I think it meets it in this case). We made it that high because we would rather a guilty person walk free than put an innocent person in jail. The costs of you and I incorrectly choosing not to associate with someone are far lower. There are other standards for guilt in other cases, such as "more probable than not" in civil trials.
- A prosecutor may believe a crime has occurred but decline to bring a case for a number of reasons (limited budget, jurisdiction, statute of limitations, difficulty or unreliability of evidence, because they think they don't have a good chance to win)
- We make decisions all the time about who we'll partner with, who we hire, who we fire, based on standards far lower than this. In general it's not a crime to be an asshole but you'd never say I should wait until it's proven in court before deciding not to hire one.
There's more than enough evidence about this person specifically, and in most cases, for me/you to feel fine never associating with this person, or working with an organization he's involved with, ever again, even if a court of law never gets involved.
That's in effect more like jail time than like some individuals shunning him.
There are plenty of careers I'm more worried about than his, starting with those of his victims, and probably continuing to those who could have been famous hackers were it not for the accidents of their birth.
The right about trials is about a fair trial by the government, and is a check on the government's power to punish.
If you are using the word "lynch mob" in a rhetorical way to refer to people who are not depriving you of life, liberty, or property, arguments about actual lynch mobs do not apply. A so-called "lynch mob" that merely has opinions about you and does not do anything to you is not unjust any more than a high school mock trial club is unjust. A so-called "lynch mob" that has opinions about you and goes on to do entirely legal things, like exert their free speech rights to publish their opinions about you, is not unjust, either.
historical data support my claim as wikipedia points: "Public humiliation is the dishonoring showcase of a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of punishment in former times, and is still practiced by different means in the modern era."
Also note that published stories like these are a vastly different ballgame than the usual person-to-person type of gossip that affects partnering and hiring choices.
Perhaps "convicted in court" is a too high of bar to you, but given the fact that people do lie about being sexually assaulted, perhaps the bar of "being accused means you did it" is a bit too low.
Ultimately it's up to each individual to decide the proper position of their bar, and perhaps this guy did indeed do it (personally, I don't care)... but the current trend of taking the accusers word as an actionable truth is troubling.
You might want to elaborate on this - it sounds like you don't care even if you think someone is a rapist, but I hope that's not your position? That's a really low bar.
Not least of all, written admission of crime by the accused himself, in addition to corroboration of several incidents of assault by the news outlet. How is the question of innocence is still being bandied when the accused has already admitted his guilt?!! Equally absurd are the futile attempts to foist standards of criminal courts on that of public opinion despite the significant differences between both systems that you noted.
To assume that guilt beyond any reasonable doubt as an absolute, scientific and completely infallible standard demonstrates an unfamiliarity with the legal system. The system may be flawed and cases may or may prosecuted for the reasons that were mentioned but many of those reasons like available resources have little if anything to do with the standard of proof that must be brought to trial.
Individuals can be prosecuted on very paltry evidence and even convicted if reasonable people find that evidence to be sufficient.
To believe that any lower standard of proof is needed to prosecute individuals is to pander to mob mentality that just because most people want to find someone guilty means we should find them guilty.
This burden of proof beyond reasonable doubt is set in place precisely to avoid such legal lynching proceedings
It's still not the same standard as the one society needs. The state wields a big hammer, and such it has relatively high standards. Us, individual society members, wield a tiny mallet, and as such we should feel more free to wield that than the state does. As the gp notes, we already do in many cases.
The courts should really be the last resort for this stuff; society should be dealing with it cleanly before it ever gets there.
Your argument about individual members of society however is, with respect, flawed. The masses of society, when all working towards a common goal are not tiny droplets in the pond but indeed the mighty torrent that can sweep away even so powerful an entity as the state. To advocate for a lower standard of evidence based on the fact that "everyone knows he is guilty" is, as mentioned, to advocate for a trial system based on mob mentality. Furthermore, public opinion can can be easily swayed by what is reported to it and I will spare this thread the question of the media or powerful individuals like Trump or Russia or Clinton etc using the media to subvert public opinion.
The system again may not be perfect but it is there to protect not only from the might of the state but also from the dictatorship of the masses which may, unlike the court system, have their own reasons for convicting someone, reasons which may not even have anything to do with the actual matter. This is even more problematic as the court system is at least subject to review and appeal whereas the masses have absolutely no check on them.
#metoo isn't just for the entertainment industry.
(My understanding is that this is basically why you sometimes see contracts banning illegal behavior. It's hard to prove illegal behavior to the extent required to throw you in prison, and that's a good thing, but it's easier to find you in breach of contract.)
This is all well and good until you are on the wrong side of that equation.
We nominally prioritize "protecting the innocent" over "punishing the guilty". There are VERY good reasons why we set things up this way.
You want the wheels of justice to grind accurately.