Whether or not we all agree with it, although we should all agree, we all know the legal principle of innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Of course, the extent of that means that, in order to convict a person of a criminal offense (civil is different), the state needs to convince twelve people with twelve different sets of eyes and ears and twelve different brains that the person is guilty - not more likely than not; but, you have to stretch your reason to say that the person is innocent.
What we're not talking about enough is that the principle is supposed to apply in the decisions to even pursue charges or to go to trial in the first place.
The complete floundering of the prosecution in the Rittenhouse trial has lead a lot of people to say that this is a tipping point in our culture in which our legal system, which is supposed to be about finding the truth, is being driven by ideology.
I'm far more pessimistic than that. I think that it's been like that for a while and it's just going to get worse.
People overwhelmingly draw conclusions about criminal justice decisions through a lens of what they believe. They become outraged when someone who they believe to be guilty either gets off or avoids charges in general, literally to the point of rioting; so, the states have been pursuing charges against a lot of people knowing full well that they'll never convince a jury of guilt and giving us farces of trials.
I believe that George Zimmerman was guilty; but, when the not guilty verdict was announced, I wasn't surprised for a second. The original investigation found insufficient evidence of wrongdoing. People went nuts and started burning things. The state caved and wasted everybody's time just to arrive at a not guilty verdict which resulted in more riots. It's all because people don't get how this works and why it should work this way.
If the prosecutor in a given case finds him or herself looking at the evidence and thinking about what he or she believes as opposed to what he or she can prove, there shouldn't be a trial. We, as a culture, shouldn't be outraged - ever - at a case being dismissed early due to lack of evidence. If the prosecutor him or herself doesn't believe that a person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and still goes after the accused, the best case scenario is a waste of taxpayer money and the worst case scenario is probably an innocent person in prison.
An innocent person going to prison is an injustice and only an injustice - it may be worse than that if it means that a guilty person is still free because we closed the case. A guilty person going free is a tragedy; but, I don't think I can call it an injustice. It would simply be justice coming short or the capacity of human problem solving coming short.