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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion letters

Letter to the editor #3

My letter to the editor concerns last Thursday’s column, titled, “At times, we should believe the victim until proven otherwise.”

To intellectually speak on this topic, it’s important to separate what we, as individuals, should do in cases like the Depp/Heard divorce from how our legal system should work in the same cases.

As a society, it would be ideal if more people would be compassionate toward potential victims instead of jumping to conclusions when they haven’t all the evidence.

The mess that Heard has had to go through is horrible and shouldn’t be brought upon anyone. However, the idea that sometimes we need to believe what victims are saying no matter what until proven otherwise is the antithesis of American ideals. It is not how our legal system should respond in a situation like this.

This country was founded on a Constitution that includes a Bill of Rights that lays out a structure for what the government and its institutions can’t take away from you. It can’t take away your freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to not be searched without warrant, to name a few.

One of those rights that the government has preserved for us, spelled out in the Fifth Amendment, is the freedom from being deprived of life, liberty or property without due process.

The idea that victims need to be believed without first trying the potential criminal would destroy that concept.

What happened to Heard in this case was terrible, but hindsight is always 20/20.

The next time something like this happens, as a society, we should wait until more facts are brought about until decisions about someone’s integrity are made.

We should never take away someone’s presumption of innocence.

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