• Fondots@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    Yes, words mean things.

    Murderer means someone who has committed murder.

    Acquitted means that someone was tried for a crime but not convicted.

    That could be because they’re actually innocent

    Or it could be because of insufficient evidence, loopholes, technicalities, and circumstances that the people who wrote the law didn’t foresee, they were unable to adequately prove guilt. It could also be due to corruption or incompetence.

    So you can commit a murder and still be acquitted of it. It doesn’t mean you’re not a murderer, it just means that you weren’t convicted for the murder you committed.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      5 months ago

      So you can commit a murder and still be acquitted of it. It doesn’t mean you’re not a murderer, it just means that you weren’t convicted for the murder you committed.

      This is the dividing line for morality.

      Some people understand that the law and morality are not the same. There are illegal things that are moral. There are legal things that are immoral.

      People who think that legality = morality are dangerous, because they will interpret a loophole in the law to be a loophole in morality. The law becomes permission to do anything that fits within it, even if it is harmful to others.

      Always worth reminding these people that the Holocaust was legal, and resistance was illegal, but we still know who the good guys and the bad guys were in WWII.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      5 months ago

      It would also be crazy if statue of limitations would be used to argue that somebody isn’t guilty when there’s solid evidence just because a court can’t legally find them guilty at that point