Conflict Resolution Training: Innocent Until Proven Guilty And Maybe Not Even Then

"The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that it's difficult to

determine whether or not they are genuine."

       Abraham Lincoln (provided to me by Michael Nees)

“Believe half of what you see son and none of what you hear”

          “I heard it through the Grapevine”

I’m not sure where Michael Nees got that Lincoln quote. Perhaps I should Google "Lincoln" on the Internet.

The key to resolving conflict is to give up being right and making others wrong.

Here’s a test to determine your conflict resolution skills: The next time someone provides you with a piece of gossip, ask yourself whether you believe it or not. The less you believe the gossip, the better your conflict resolution skills.

Even when you observe the behavior yourself, be careful about judging the other person. The juiciest payoff for a human being is to be right and make others wrong.  

Another way of thinking about this is to live by the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. I suggest that many conflicts would be resolved if we lived by the rule that others are innocent until proven guilty and, even when we are sure of guilt, to check our premises before acting.

I was reminded of this when I was recently called to jury duty. Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience. 

I wasn’t selected for the jury, but I did get to hear the judge describe the case, which involved possible child molestation. The accused, a man of about 50, was alleged to have taken pictures of his 12-year old stepdaughter. There was an intimation that he was accused of more than just taking pictures.

Later, I repeated what I had heard about the case to friends, many of whom questioned whether they would have been able to serve impartially on the jury. They had children of their own and were outraged by the crime. Several had been molested themselves as children and still carried the scars.

I said that I would have absolutely no trouble serving impartially, that the accused was, without question, innocent until proven guilty. I came to this conclusion because of another time I had been called to serve on a jury and had likewise been excused.

In that case, we were told that the man on trial was accused of hitting a car in which two children and their mother had been riding. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the man had run from the scene and, it was alleged, he had been smoking marijuana. As I heard the details of the case, I wondered why a jury trial was necessary. Why waste taxpayer time and money on adjudicating something for which this man was so obviously guilty?

Two weeks after I had been excused, I was reading a newspaper and I saw a story about the trial. 

After deliberating for only 20 minutes, the jury found the defendant not guilty. In fact, when several of the jurors were interviewed, they questioned why there had  even been a trial since the man being accused was so plainly innocent. Obviously, my perception of the facts and the actual facts were not the same.

Presume innocence. We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. Start reversing that if you want t Presume innocence. We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and  resolve a conflict.  

Since we don’t have other jurors to give us their perspective of the “evidence,” we need to be doubly careful that what we are seeing is “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”