“Sometime this week England’s Football Association is expected to decide whether to charge John Terry over allegations he racially abused Anton Ferdinand in a league game last year. That may well be a necessary procedural step, even after Terry was found not guilty of the same offense by a magistrate’s court last week, but this has become an incident in which almost no one, on any side, has come out with any credit — with the exception, oddly, of the British legal system, which has shown itself robust, fair and transparent in explaining its workings.” SI – Jonathan Wilson

The troubling contradiction at the heart of the John Terry trial
“Jonathan Wilson has a very thoughtful post up which helps untangle some of the maniacal media threads that have emerged as a result of the John Terry trial, in which he was found not guilty of racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand. Wilson painstakingly explains the basis of the rule of law, that the burden of proof is on the accuser to prove the defender guilty of crimes charged ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ To this day, many believe ‘not guilty’ verdicts somehow assert inviolable empirical fact, and the reaction to the verdict in some quarters reflects this belief. As with the workings of parliamentary democracy, it’s alarming how little citizens seem to understand the judicial and governmental system of which they are an involuntary participants.” The Score