I can imagine nothing less horrible than being innocent, knowing you’re innocent and being up against folks who think you should be killed unless you can prove that you’re not guilty.

But, more importantly, this post is about shackling children. More to the point, neither case involved anyone — even a child — who had committed a felony or shown his or herself to be violent. Re-read what the judge said about the child who was sitting next to me who was there accused but not convicted (never was, by the way, at least not in that case — I don’t know about any other cases with that child) of a misdemeanor.

Additionally, we’re talking about children here.

But your comment touches on another point which I’ve been meaning to blog about for a long time: the idea that because there’s a one in a million shot of something happening, we have to take steps to prevent it, even if it means mistreating hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who would never do the things you want to prevent.

I also love the idea that you twisted the time-worn American tradition — the one that made our nation great — on its head. People are not guilty from the day they are born until the day they are proven guilty of some crime. We don’t take people into court to prove them not guilty. It’s the other way around: the State believes they have committed a crime and it is the responsibility, the burden, of the State to prove that what the State believes is true beyond a reasonable doubt.

Thank you for being brave enough to be the living demonstration of what’s gone wrong with our “justice” system. Like you, most people today assume guilt and wait to have someone show them that they are wrong.

This is what leads to shackling children. This is what leads us to mistrust everyone and to assume the worst of each fellow citizen. This is what has lead to the downfall of the United States of America.

The only thing left now is for us to find a way to make it official.