WordWolf

It's not all you CAN say, but it is all you WILL say. This is STILL neither a jury nor a court of law. None of us have confused it for that, nor think the rules are the same for discussion and court- except you. OUTSIDE the court of law, it is not practical to follow the rules of the law. That's why we're under no requirement to do so. (Except in your imagination.) And your premise has been refuted, repeatedly, by people who actually KNOW the law, who WORK with the law, who TEACH the law. However, you, the layman who has never STUDIED the law, have concluded you understand the law better than professors of law, etc.

If one limits oneself to only what's written in Scripture, it's obvious this is WRONG on several counts. "No church politics." Gee, that discounts Peter chiding the Law-mongers who wanted Judaism continued, complete with the yoke of the Law that was too heavy for them or their ancestors to bear. No "underhanded machinations." Gee, that discounts Alexander the coopersmith. No "divisions." HA! No "denominations". Gee, that discounts the "Paul-Apollos-Cephas-Christ" people, of whom the last set were the craziest. Divisions and pettiness didn't enter at any point because there would have to have been a time it wasn't around SOMEWHERE. Maybe the day of Pentecost ITSELF, but after that....

That's it.

It seems like you're going somewhere with this- that you're looking for a SPECIFIC answer. How about letting the rest of us know what's on your mind?

Having spent some time looking at what lcm and vpw both said, and what others have said about them, I HAVE concluded that's one diffrerence between vpw and lcm. vpw set up his organization, and was fully aware that at points he was deceiving people- saying he got special revelation, taking credit for the work of others, and that some of it was outright deception. He had goals he wanted to accomplish, and had no hesitation about deceiving people whenever it suited those goals. lcm arrived right out of college, never having had time working a secular job or getting experience "in the real world" outside school. vpw snowed lcm completely. vpw covered his own tracks with skill because he KNEW what he was doing was wrong. lcm was twisted into vpw's image, and thought he really wasn't doing wrong when he was doing wrong. So, he didn't cover his tracks so much- he saw nothing wrong, and nothing to cover. That's one reason he was CAUGHT. So, yes, on one level, lcm was a victim. However, what he did with his indoctrination was his own decision. When he got the big chair, he could have travelled around and dealt with people on a personal basis for a while, getting a sense of what the members were like AROUND THE COUNTRY. Instead, he insulated himself more and more. He also faced the realization he was not ready for the job he was assigned to, by demanding oaths of loyalty from people and pulling the strings tighter. So, he was victimized at one level, but he turned around and victimized others. There's many things he could have done instead.

When trying to figure out who was a victim of who, the first question, I think, is "How were they victimized?" If the statement begins "We were scammed and tricked by Corps", then we follow it back. If we were scammed and tricked by Corps, did they know it was a scam and a trick? If not (almost all were NOT and at least TRIED to do the right thing), then THEY were scammed and tricked. So, who scammed and tricked the Corps? The next step back is to VPW. So, when he scammed and tricked the Corps, did HE know it was a scam and a trick? If not, then we have to keep following it back. SOMEONE knew it was a scam, and SOMEONE thought up the scam. In the case of VPW, he took Leonard's class, and taught it to others, telling them it was HIS class and not mentioning Leonard to them. He took Stiles' book and retyped it, telling people it was HIS book and not mentioning Stiles to THEM. VPW sought out the hippies at the end of the 60s, and told them that God spoke to him over 20 years before, and that he had special knowledge other Christians lacked. As proof, he displayed knowledge, like the contents of Leonard's class and Stiles' book. While getting all his material from other Christians, he kept saying other Christians lacked answers. Meanwhile, there's no indication that people like Leonard were anything BUT trustworthy, and trusting others because THEY could be trusted. So, the top level of scam is where vpw was. He knew when he was making things up and claiming it was God Almighty talking to them.

Next song. "I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow I met one man who was wounded in love I met another man who was wounded with hatred"

So, who's turn is it?

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20020617.html ALLEN IVERSON AND THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE By SHERRY F. COLB Monday, Jun. 17, 2002 On Thursday, July 11th, Allen Iverson--the Philadelphia 76ers' All-Star Guard and NBA most valuable player for the 2000-01 season--was charged with three felonies and assorted misdemeanors. Prosecutors say he threw his wife of eleven months, Tawana Iverson, out of their house, naked, and subsequently threatened several men with a gun in his efforts to locate her. One of the men gave an account of what happened in a 911 call in which he suggested that this was the third time Iverson had thrown his wife out of their home. In response to the charges, Larry Brown and Billy King, the Sixers' coach and general manager, say they firmly support Iverson, reportedly emphasizing that he should be "presumed innocent" unless he is proven guilty. Such statements, though quite common, misconstrue the role of the presumption of innocence in a criminal case and feed the mistaken belief--shared by many--that the Constitution requires everyone in the United States to presume that an accused criminal is actually innocent until a jury finds otherwise. "Innocent Until Proven Guilty": Literal Truth? Recall another celebrity athlete who stood accused of spousal violence. During the year-long circus that was the O.J. Simpson trial, I encountered two odd claims by non-lawyers (and some misguided attorneys) with whom I was acquainted. The first claim was that Simpson actually was innocent, and would continue to be innocent, unless and until a jury brought in a guilty verdict against him. For all but those who take the radical (one might even say preposterous) view that the truth of an event from the past magically changes when the jury reaches a verdict, the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" cannot be taken as an accurate, literal description of reality. O.J. Simpson either did or did not kill Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, and nothing that a jury says later can factually alter that historical truth. No Command for Non-jurors to Suspend Judgment A second remark I encountered during the year that Marcia Clark and Johnny Cochran became household names, was that we all must suspend judgment about O.J.'s guilt until the jury reaches a verdict, with the implicit correlative that an acquittal requires all people to believe that O.J. was innocent. Neither of these positions has any foundation in law or logic. An audience watching a television show like The Practice or Law and Order must await the end of the program to find out what "really" happened. That is because the shows are fictional, and what most viewers want to know is whether--in the script--the accused is guilty or not. Because the truth lives only in the imagination of the show's creators, it is appropriate for the audience to delay all conclusions until the end, relegating suspicions and beliefs to the status of guesswork until the dramatic, and often unexpected, denouement. The Presumption of Innocence in a Criminal Trial What then is the appropriate role for the presumption of innocence? In a criminal trial, the presumption of innocence is an important constitutional protection for the accused. It means that the jury may only pronounce the defendant guilty if the physical and testimonial evidence presented prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Put differently, the jury must say "not guilty" even when it believes the defendant is guilty and often, it follows, even when the defendant in fact is guilty. Until the evidentiary threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is reached, the judge and the Constitution order the jury to acquit. The reason for this rule is that a guilty verdict subjects a person to incarceration, the deprivation of freedom that we all cherish and that is guaranteed us under normal circumstances. Though the acquittal of a factually guilty man is unfortunate and costly, it is an inevitable byproduct of a system designed to reduce to close to zero the odds that a factually innocent person will be convicted of a crime. None of this, however, has anything to do with what the rest of us--the people of the United States who are not serving on a particular criminal defendant's jury--are obligated to think or say. In the case of Allen Iverson, for example, the man who called 911 to report being threatened at gunpoint is under no obligation to presume Iverson's innocence. Indeed, if he takes the witness stand at trial and falsely recants his story as a favor to a friend (or as a loyal basketball fan), he will be guilty of perjury. How to Interpret Inconsistent Verdicts When O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder and subsequently held liable for wrongful death in a civil trial, some people wondered what they were supposed to think. For those who would treat the jury as a font of truth, it was possible to reconcile the verdicts--the evidence might have proved that Simpson probably killed Brown and Goldman, but it was not quite strong enough to eliminate all reasonable doubt. Significantly, however, we need not view the verdicts in that deferential, crabbed way. It is possible and even reasonable to reach other conclusions. One might conclude either that (a) the criminal jury erred in reaching its verdict; (b) the criminal jury disregarded the judge's instructions to find the defendant guilty if the evidence supported that verdict beyond a reasonable doubt; or © the criminal jury correctly reacted to the evidence admitted at trial, but other evidence that failed to make its way in--including, but not limited to, Simpson's flight from the police, threats of suicide, claims that he loved Nicole "too much," and the prophetic entries in Nicole's own diary--fill the gap between what the jury heard and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Notably, in the civil trial, Simpson was forced to testify and had no recourse to the Fifth Amendment, as he had in his criminal trial. That too could account for the divergence in verdicts. So could the fact that a photo of Simpson in the Bruno Magli shoes he had denied wearing was available at the civil, but not yet at the criminal, trial. The Right to Think and Speak Logically, Outside the Jury Room However one views the Simpson and Iverson cases, the Constitution does not dictate what we ought to think or say. Indeed, it protects those thoughts and statements, regardless of their content or viewpoint, under the First Amendment. We therefore need not limit ourselves in the ways the jury is limited--in terms of either the evidence we are allowed to consider, the threshold that evidence must meet before we draw a conclusion, or even our own default presumption. You can presume that Allan Iverson is guilty as charged, in other words, subject to rebuttal by proof that emerges in the next several months. You can do that, based on logic and the evidence you already know about, along with the fact that thankfully, a relatively small proportion of people charged with crimes are factually innocent. What you cannot do, consistent with the Constitution, is bring your logical presumption of guilt, your willingness to infer guilt on the basis of inadmissible evidence (such as Iverson's prior bad acts), or your readiness to "convict without a trial" into a jury room. In that room, where twelve people hold the power to deprive a person of her fundamental freedom from physical confinement, the law and the judge's instructions rightly govern our thought processes. Sherry F. Colb, a FindLaw columnist, is a Professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark and teaches courses in criminal procedure and evidence.

Man, if I was a REAL attorney, I'd wish my opponents had cases this weak..... "Everyone charged with a penal offence" There is NO COURTROOM HERE. No one has been CHARGED in a courtroom. We're not bound by the rules of the court- nor are the rules of the court bound by rules of discussion. Rape is an offense in a legal sense, but it exists in discussions outside of courtrooms, too. In fact, we've been discussing it outside of courtrooms for many pages, now. Surprise, surprise! "NO TRIAL HAS OCCURRED?" Who said a trial HAD occurred? You're the only one comparing this discussion with any kind of "court" in the first place. So, let's see... Can't defend his position from a Biblical point of view (II Corinthians 13:1b "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established."), Can't defend his position from a legal point of view (the rules of court do not apply to discussion outside of court), is now resorting to misinterpreting parts of sentences from UN documents he normally spurns..... You know, some people by now would have admitted they had an indefensible position. Life continues past admitting that.

Yes, but last time, an ADDITIONAL quote was said to be the "giveaway", and the round went too fast. I figured you'd have forgotten by now, especially if I left the "giveway" out.

"He hates but one man: the man who stole his shoes." "That's because there is no air in the windmills of your mind." "He swallowed a live hand grenade. He has no internal organs." "What's your favorite ice cream flavor?" "Buffalo Ripple."

It was the first rap song AIRED ON VH1 and MTV. It was not the first rap song- 1979's "Rapper's Delight" beats it by at least a year, and other songs probably predate THAT. This song is Blondie's "Rapture." (1980 for the album appearance, 1981 for the single.) For the curious, Fab Five Freddy (who told me everything's fly) appears in the video. He's the tagger who's spray-painting graffiti on a wall- with an empty can (no paint is coming out.)

We had more than 1 thread discussing the letter. The better thread is here: http://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=17664 "The Way, It Was." (Not to be confused with the similarly titled, shorter thread on the same subject.)

Well, Wacky Funster, I read that letter, and my conclusions were different than yours. Here's the letter, and then here's what I wrote.....

So, are you saying, WD, that you have NO business interests that involve sales of Way materials, that the closest you DO have to such an interest is operating AT A FINANCIAL LOSS by distributing specific music media? That's a carefully-worded question. You can fairly answer "YES" or "NO" to it. I noticed you STILL didn't answer his question- you only attacked someone else's post in response to the question you didn't answer.

This one is equivalent to saying "Lots of people met Jeffrey Dahmer and were never eaten" and using that to suggest Dahmer was innocent of cannibalism. We don't care how many people Dahmer DIDN'T eat. We don't care how many people vpw DIDN'T molest, rape, drug, or abuse. We care about those he did- even if the number of people he DIDN'T was tens of thousands and he "only" abused, say 100. Even IF you're correct that that particular person wasn't a victim in a substantial sense, that is a non-issue for this discussion. How you can read paragraphs of one victim, miss them completely, then find the one sentence on the "non-victim" should strike people, at the least, as PECULIAR. If you're not going to bother putting in time to read a FEW accounts of victims, why should he bother linking dozens and dozens? Some people have read OTHER accounts here, and expressed sympathy for the victims. Why can't you be more like them? Specifically, like THIS poster: That poster specifically was responding to the accounts of 2 other posters, whom he believed reliable, giving reliable accounts. His reaction was to try to comfort the suffering. He had READ plenty of the accounts, at least some of which he deemed "reliable" or "trustworthy." He didn't see the need to keep bringing them up, challenging the women who suffered, suggesting they were less than truthful, and so on. I wish that poster was posting on this thread.

"Psych"?

Funny, I was looking at that very thread a few hours ago. One poster had some comments I thought were worth repeating, in particular: That poster had read some credible witness testimony on the thread, and concluded that trying to excuse vpw- or suggest he didn't do anything- was hurting them, which he didn't want.

As anyone WHO CAN READ can see, claiming Jeff said WD said OUTRIGHT that anyone is lying is ITSELF a LIE, is ITSELF "PURE FICTION", a "FABRICATION", and a "MISREPRESENTATION" of what Jeff actually said. So far WD has misunderstood THE LAW, the VICTIM'S ACCOUNTS, the EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS of BYSTANDERS, the EXPLANATIONS BY PROFESSIONALS, and the POSTS ON THIS THREAD. Considering WD's posted many times on this thread denigrating the use of eyewitness testimony to conclude guilt, he's also misunderstood what the Bible has said on the subject as well. Then again, it's possible he DID understand all this, and has a personal agenda that he considers more important than the truth about the law, the truth about what's said, and the truth about what God Almighty said. I can't respect either stance. Gross laziness or gross hypocrisy? Not something I can accept.

Is anyone keeping track of how many logical fallacies WD can commit in a single thread? This one is equivalent to saying "Lots of people met Jeffrey Dahmer and were never eaten" and using that to suggest Dahmer was innocent of cannibalism.

What does that respectable institution of journalism, the Wall Street Journal, say? Oh, look! They carried Dan Abrams' column! Apparently, they (professionals on journalism, and what is worth reporting) disagreed with our one layman who claimed it was the byproduct of a lesser network and errors on the part of the PROFESSIONAL who wrote it...... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123569758678089027.html * FEBRUARY 27, 2009 Presumed Innocent? Bernie Madoff? Unless you're a juror, there's no reason to suspend judgment. By DAN ABRAMS People constantly complain to me about news coverage of criminal cases. "What happened to the presumption of innocence?" they ask at almost every turn. Well, I'm tired of it. I don't presume that Bernie Madoff is innocent. The same goes for toddler Caylee Anthony's mom Casey, or for any of the alleged mobsters on trial in New York, or most other high-profile defendants. Certain defense attorneys (or former Illinois governors who effectively decide to represent themselves) would have you believe that is somehow shameful, maybe even anti-American. As a citizen -- or even a TV legal analyst -- am I required to presume innocence, i.e., that the authorities arrest the wrong person in every case? Not a chance. Imagine how this might play out on television: "So Dan, how bad is it for (insert name of minor reality-show celebrity here) that the authorities found a pound of cocaine and four ounces of heroin on his person and in his car, the entire arrest was captured on videotape and the defendant confessed the drugs were his?" "Bad? Bob, I have to presume the defendant innocent, so I'll presume those drugs were planted by corrupt police officers well before the car came into focus on the tape. And that confession? Well, it must have been coerced." That would hardly reflect an effort to assess and evaluate the legal strategies and evidence as fairly and objectively as possible. While not explicitly articulated in the Constitution, the presumption of innocence has, through Supreme Court opinions, become a fundamental tenet of our criminal-justice system, and rightly so. Traced back to Deuteronomy, and reportedly embodied in the laws of Sparta and Athens, the presumption ensures that government, which has the enormous power to take away someone's freedom, assumes the burden to prove its accusation beyond a reasonable doubt, the properly demanding legal standard in criminal proceedings. Essentially we stack the legal deck in favor of the defendant. After all, the potential consequence (in most cases prison time) is so grave that we say we would rather let "10 guilty men go free than convict an innocent one." But unless I am sitting in the jury box armed with that power I, and any other nonjuror for that matter, have no obligation, moral or legal, to embrace that legal fiction. The same applies, for example, to hearsay evidence. It's generally inadmissible in court, and yet most of us live our lives based on what people we trust tell us they heard or learned. Some claim that, because legal banditos like me refuse to presume every defendant innocent, the prospective jury pool is polluted, thereby making it impossible for jurors to presume innocent a defendant in a high-profile case. Malarkey. That is why we have jury selection. The goal is not to find jurors who necessarily know nothing about a case, but to find jurors who can fairly evaluate evidence and determine guilt or innocence. No question, extensive media coverage can make the selection of a jury take longer. In a worst-case scenario, a change of venue would be the remedy. But defense attorneys who complain about poisoned jury pools are often really just saying that they think prospective jurors are lying when asked what they've heard about the case in the media. Watching jury selection during the O.J. Simpson civil case in Santa Monica in 1996 served as a reminder that, lo and behold, not everyone follows news that closely. Did every juror know about the criminal case that had concluded in downtown Los Angeles months earlier? Of course. Did they know some of the facts? Surely. But they were also not O.J. junkies who had followed the ins and outs of the case. They were open to rendering a verdict based on what they heard in court. What about those like CNN's Nancy Grace who seems to presume every defendant guilty? Criticize her if you like, but such behavior doesn't mean the rest of us must feign ignorance. We can question police and prosecutors without necessarily presuming they are corrupt or misguided. Early in the investigation of the Duke University lacrosse players accused of rape in 2006, some of the very same people who suggest that the presumption of innocence be applied in all aspects of society demanded that action be taken immediately against the students. The case is now regularly cited as an example of how important it is to presume all defendants innocent in the media as well. But that misses the point. Those of us who examined the evidence, even superficially, quickly realized the case was flimsy at best. The lesson there was not about presumptions but about the need to critically evaluate facts. Demanding that all of us presume every defendant innocent outside of a courtroom is to demand that we stop evaluating facts, thereby suffocating independent thought and opinion. There is nothing "reasonable" about that. Mr. Abrams is NBC News chief legal analyst and the CEO of Abrams Research.

http://blog.nj.com/njv_frank_askin/2008/12...umption_of.html Blogo and the presumption of innocence Posted by Frank Askin December 24, 2008 12:11PM Illinois Governor Rod Blogojevich asks his constituents to give him the presumption of innocence they would expect for themselves if accused of crime. And there is no question when and if Blogojevich goes to trial in a criminal court that presumption holds. But there is no such presumption when it comes to the court of public opinion. At such times, the people of Illinois are entitled to make their own determination whether he is fit to hold public office. Indeed, even if he went to trial and was found not guilty, that would have little bearing on his fitness for office. A not guilty verdict would only signify that a jury had found that the government and failed to prove his commission of crime beyond a reasonable doubt. The "reasonable doubt" standard is not the test for public service. It would not even be the appropriate test for an impeachment proceeding before the Illinois Legislature. Indeed, the Illinois Constitution is silent as to the grounds for impeachment. It merely provides that if the lower house votes by a majority to impeach the Governor, the Senate may remove him from office, after trial, by a 2/3 vote. It does not even specify that there must be a "high crime or misdemeanor," as the Federal Constitution does. Presumably, the test would be whether the Legislature believes that the governor has violated his oath of office. And there is clearly no requirement that it find liability beyond a reasonable doubt. No person has a right to hold public office until proof of commission of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a judicial test, not a political one. ================ Frank Askin is Professor of Law and founding director of the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers School of Law, Newark. His memoir is "Defending Rights: a Life in Law & Politics. He is also listed in "Best Lawyers in America."

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20020617.html ALLEN IVERSON AND THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE By SHERRY F. COLB Monday, Jun. 17, 2002 On Thursday, July 11th, Allen Iverson--the Philadelphia 76ers' All-Star Guard and NBA most valuable player for the 2000-01 season--was charged with three felonies and assorted misdemeanors. Prosecutors say he threw his wife of eleven months, Tawana Iverson, out of their house, naked, and subsequently threatened several men with a gun in his efforts to locate her. One of the men gave an account of what happened in a 911 call in which he suggested that this was the third time Iverson had thrown his wife out of their home. In response to the charges, Larry Brown and Billy King, the Sixers' coach and general manager, say they firmly support Iverson, reportedly emphasizing that he should be "presumed innocent" unless he is proven guilty. Such statements, though quite common, misconstrue the role of the presumption of innocence in a criminal case and feed the mistaken belief--shared by many--that the Constitution requires everyone in the United States to presume that an accused criminal is actually innocent until a jury finds otherwise. "Innocent Until Proven Guilty": Literal Truth? Recall another celebrity athlete who stood accused of spousal violence. During the year-long circus that was the O.J. Simpson trial, I encountered two odd claims by non-lawyers (and some misguided attorneys) with whom I was acquainted. The first claim was that Simpson actually was innocent, and would continue to be innocent, unless and until a jury brought in a guilty verdict against him. For all but those who take the radical (one might even say preposterous) view that the truth of an event from the past magically changes when the jury reaches a verdict, the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" cannot be taken as an accurate, literal description of reality. O.J. Simpson either did or did not kill Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, and nothing that a jury says later can factually alter that historical truth. No Command for Non-jurors to Suspend Judgment A second remark I encountered during the year that Marcia Clark and Johnny Cochran became household names, was that we all must suspend judgment about O.J.'s guilt until the jury reaches a verdict, with the implicit correlative that an acquittal requires all people to believe that O.J. was innocent. Neither of these positions has any foundation in law or logic. An audience watching a television show like The Practice or Law and Order must await the end of the program to find out what "really" happened. That is because the shows are fictional, and what most viewers want to know is whether--in the script--the accused is guilty or not. Because the truth lives only in the imagination of the show's creators, it is appropriate for the audience to delay all conclusions until the end, relegating suspicions and beliefs to the status of guesswork until the dramatic, and often unexpected, denouement. The Presumption of Innocence in a Criminal Trial What then is the appropriate role for the presumption of innocence? In a criminal trial, the presumption of innocence is an important constitutional protection for the accused. It means that the jury may only pronounce the defendant guilty if the physical and testimonial evidence presented prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Put differently, the jury must say "not guilty" even when it believes the defendant is guilty and often, it follows, even when the defendant in fact is guilty. Until the evidentiary threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt is reached, the judge and the Constitution order the jury to acquit. The reason for this rule is that a guilty verdict subjects a person to incarceration, the deprivation of freedom that we all cherish and that is guaranteed us under normal circumstances. Though the acquittal of a factually guilty man is unfortunate and costly, it is an inevitable byproduct of a system designed to reduce to close to zero the odds that a factually innocent person will be convicted of a crime. None of this, however, has anything to do with what the rest of us--the people of the United States who are not serving on a particular criminal defendant's jury--are obligated to think or say. In the case of Allen Iverson, for example, the man who called 911 to report being threatened at gunpoint is under no obligation to presume Iverson's innocence. Indeed, if he takes the witness stand at trial and falsely recants his story as a favor to a friend (or as a loyal basketball fan), he will be guilty of perjury. How to Interpret Inconsistent Verdicts When O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder and subsequently held liable for wrongful death in a civil trial, some people wondered what they were supposed to think. For those who would treat the jury as a font of truth, it was possible to reconcile the verdicts--the evidence might have proved that Simpson probably killed Brown and Goldman, but it was not quite strong enough to eliminate all reasonable doubt. Significantly, however, we need not view the verdicts in that deferential, crabbed way. It is possible and even reasonable to reach other conclusions. One might conclude either that (a) the criminal jury erred in reaching its verdict; (b) the criminal jury disregarded the judge's instructions to find the defendant guilty if the evidence supported that verdict beyond a reasonable doubt; or © the criminal jury correctly reacted to the evidence admitted at trial, but other evidence that failed to make its way in--including, but not limited to, Simpson's flight from the police, threats of suicide, claims that he loved Nicole "too much," and the prophetic entries in Nicole's own diary--fill the gap between what the jury heard and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Notably, in the civil trial, Simpson was forced to testify and had no recourse to the Fifth Amendment, as he had in his criminal trial. That too could account for the divergence in verdicts. So could the fact that a photo of Simpson in the Bruno Magli shoes he had denied wearing was available at the civil, but not yet at the criminal, trial. The Right to Think and Speak Logically, Outside the Jury Room However one views the Simpson and Iverson cases, the Constitution does not dictate what we ought to think or say. Indeed, it protects those thoughts and statements, regardless of their content or viewpoint, under the First Amendment. We therefore need not limit ourselves in the ways the jury is limited--in terms of either the evidence we are allowed to consider, the threshold that evidence must meet before we draw a conclusion, or even our own default presumption. You can presume that Allan Iverson is guilty as charged, in other words, subject to rebuttal by proof that emerges in the next several months. You can do that, based on logic and the evidence you already know about, along with the fact that thankfully, a relatively small proportion of people charged with crimes are factually innocent. What you cannot do, consistent with the Constitution, is bring your logical presumption of guilt, your willingness to infer guilt on the basis of inadmissible evidence (such as Iverson's prior bad acts), or your readiness to "convict without a trial" into a jury room. In that room, where twelve people hold the power to deprive a person of her fundamental freedom from physical confinement, the law and the judge's instructions rightly govern our thought processes. Sherry F. Colb, a FindLaw columnist, is a Professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark and teaches courses in criminal procedure and evidence.