For the reasons you mentioned in another post, people generally
assume that if charged, the individual *must* be guilty because the
prosecutor *must* have had solid evidence and the paper *must* have
checked all the facts. Forwarding that story amounts to a defacto
conviction in the court of public opinion.

You are going too far again. Let's take it out of the whole realm of
boats and of this newsgroup. Let's say that this was we read in the
daily paper (or *any* random newsgroup) that a local broker was being
charged with fraud. We might mind our civic principles and consider
that broker innocent until proven guilty ... but at the same time, we
probably wouldn't open a new account there the next day.

Certainly that kind of caution will cause the broker's business to slow,
but to be honest that's what it's supposed to do. It is supposed to
give us time to see if the pesumption of innocence is upheld by the court.

A charge is not a guarantee of guilt, but certainly neither is it a
guarantee of innocence.


You're still missing my main point: guilty or innocent, what good purpose is
served by posting this information to RBP? What benefit is there to
spreading the word about *anyone's* legal troubles on this forum?? Should
someone start digging into *your* life and post details about any skeletons
you may have in your closet here? Or mine? Or anyone's??? I don't think
this is the place for it.