I have to hand it to some of you, you've found a way to drastically speed up the justice system. Since all it takes is an investigation and people turning themselves in to determined guilt we no longer need a slow, expensive and complicated legal process. No more judges, court rooms, discovery, 3rd party witnesses. No more jury duty.
Nice strawman there...
Being innocent until proven guilty applies to the court of law. No one here has stated otherwise, no matter how much you try to twist the words of other people.
That does not - in any way, shape or form - have anything to do with what people think of the situation. Their opinion is their opinion and does not infringe on any rights the people involved have. At no point in time has "innocent until proven guilty" meant that people must not forn on opinion on the matter until a court has made a decision, nor does any outcome of such a proceeding mean that people must shift their opinion in accordance with the outcome. Just look at OJ Simpson. He was found not guilty, yet most people still think he is, and so did a civil case.
Applying innocent until proven guilty to anything beyond a court case is akin to bringing up freedom of speech on any matter not involving the government, absurd from beginning to end. In fact, both are completely illogical.
It is also rather weird to go out of your way to defend people when you have little idea what happened, yet are very much fine with leveling the possiibility of false accusations against the victim. How is that not a double-standard? Somehow it is a okay to attach one crime (false accusations) against one person, yet absolutely nothing may be said against those who allegedly have committed another one? You are contradicting your own argument.
And no, a court doesn't decide whether someone is innocent or not. That's a question of morality, not law. A court decides whether there is deemed to be enough evidence to find someone guilty of the crime he is charged with. A court can very much acquit a person who did indeed commit the crime because there just is not enough evidence to prove his guilt. It happens often enough. Just like people get sentenced even though they are not guilty. And yes, someone can distance himself from people even if a court did not find them guilty, because a person (or a sports-league for that matter) does not need to adhere to the same standards as a court of law.
This isn't exactly a case of no one knowing what happened either. Everyone acknowledged what happened, they are just of different opinion what it meant. And that is something people can very much have an opinion about, including thinking the behaviour of the accused has been repugnant and worthy enough of losing their
privilege to play in the NHL, regardless of whether a court finds that there is enough evidence to convict the accused.
