LETTERS: INNOCENT IS KEY ISSUE

To the editor:

I am writing in response to the recent letter from Ian Sutherland, assistant prosecuting attorney of Cape Girardeau County. He states in his letters that "innocence is not at issue in a court of law."

The basic constitutional principles underlying our judicial system are all based on innocence. IN fact, in every criminal case the judge tell the jury that "the charge of any offense is not evidence, and it creates no inference that any offense was committed or that the defendant is guilty of an offense. The defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until, during your deliberations upon your verdict, you find him guilty. This presumption of innocence places upon the state the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty."

Innocence is an issue in a court of law and precisely is what courts are all about.

Mr. Sutherland goes on to say that "often, guilty people are acquitted because relevant and reliable evidence of their guilt is excluded for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the merits of the case." He says that "the technical issues involved in the legal process have virtually nothing to do with innocence."

These technical issues have everything to do with innocence, because the reason we have them is not to protect the guilty, but to protect the innocent. It is a fundamental principle of our judicial system that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Proof of guilt must be based on reliable, relevant and convincing evidence. This is especially important in a death penalty case. No longer can two people simply say, for example, that Jane is a witch and then we burn Jane at the stake.

The reason we have the rules Mr. Sutherland calls technical issues is to ensure that before we put someone to death we have considered only that evidence which has some basic features of relevancy, credibility and reliability. Merely accusing someone of a crime is not enough. To ignore the presumption of innocence that everyone enjoys and to allow unreliable, irrelevant and incredible evidence to be presented at trial would create a mockery of the intentions and dreams of our Founding Fathers and ruin the best judicial system on Earth.

ANN KISKE, Attorney at Law

Jackson