If you are not confident enough in the strength of your evidence to simply say X, don’t publish it at all. In particular you state that you are intending to act on a “credible accusation”. This suggests that you do not actually have first-hand evidence of the truth of the matter, no matter how much you trust your source, and should be taken as further reason not to publish at all.
If you believe that a crime has been committed, that it should be punished, and have some testimony or other evidence to back up that accusation, we are not the people you should be talking to.
If you feel very strongly that you should publish anyway, consult a lawyer capable of advising you on matters of defamation before you do so.
It seems to be that your advice would prohibit me from saying “I believe Roman Polanski is a child rapist” or “I believe OJ Simpson is a murderer”. I’d try to avoid flatly asserting those. (I seem to have a higher bar than most for doing that.) I certainly have no first hand evidence on the truth of the claims.
If you think your advice wouldn’t apply to those, why not? If you think it would...
I’m not going to refrain out of fear of defamation lawsuits. I think that would be both cowardly and a miscalculation of the risks.
One enormous difference is that both of those are matters of public record, as determined by admission and/or jury verdicts made after examining direct evidence. Furthermore, in the current context you are not going to damage either of their lives to any meaningful degree by publically making the claim (regardless of whether the statements are true or not). If you were making either claim under similar circumstances to the situation you were asking about, I would also strongly advise against it for much the same reasons.
Note that I am not just talking about “fear of defamation lawsuits”. Legal advice would help in reducing the risk to yourself and anyone financially connected with you certainly, but also increases the chances of successfully prosecuting the case (in court or otherwise) against the person you believe to have committed this crime.
Quite frankly, stating “by the way, I believe this person to have committed crime X” in a post tangentially related to that person seems one of the worst possible ways to go about the matter.
both of those are matters of public record, as determined by admission and/or jury verdicts made after examining direct evidence
I specifically chose examples where I believe this is not the case. As I understand the situations:
Polanski has pled guilty to some of what I accuse him of. He denies other parts, which he has not been tried for. I don’t know in what parts of the process a jury would have been involved. (Also, the guilty plea was part of a deal, and I think plea deals have a substantial rate of false confessions.)
Simpson denies it and was famously acquitted by a jury. He was later found liable in a civil trial. I don’t know if a jury would have been involved in that.
increases the chances of successfully prosecuting the case (in court or otherwise) against the person you believe to have committed this crime.
Prosecuting the person is not my goal here. If I do think about the effect of me-saying-something on the chances of the person getting convicted, my guess is that the effect is probably tiny but more likely to lean positive than negative.
If you think the effect is likely substantially negative to the extent that it’s worth getting legal advice, I’d like to hear more detail.
If you are not confident enough in the strength of your evidence to simply say X, don’t publish it at all. In particular you state that you are intending to act on a “credible accusation”. This suggests that you do not actually have first-hand evidence of the truth of the matter, no matter how much you trust your source, and should be taken as further reason not to publish at all.
If you believe that a crime has been committed, that it should be punished, and have some testimony or other evidence to back up that accusation, we are not the people you should be talking to.
If you feel very strongly that you should publish anyway, consult a lawyer capable of advising you on matters of defamation before you do so.
It seems to be that your advice would prohibit me from saying “I believe Roman Polanski is a child rapist” or “I believe OJ Simpson is a murderer”. I’d try to avoid flatly asserting those. (I seem to have a higher bar than most for doing that.) I certainly have no first hand evidence on the truth of the claims.
If you think your advice wouldn’t apply to those, why not? If you think it would...
I’m not going to refrain out of fear of defamation lawsuits. I think that would be both cowardly and a miscalculation of the risks.
One enormous difference is that both of those are matters of public record, as determined by admission and/or jury verdicts made after examining direct evidence. Furthermore, in the current context you are not going to damage either of their lives to any meaningful degree by publically making the claim (regardless of whether the statements are true or not). If you were making either claim under similar circumstances to the situation you were asking about, I would also strongly advise against it for much the same reasons.
Note that I am not just talking about “fear of defamation lawsuits”. Legal advice would help in reducing the risk to yourself and anyone financially connected with you certainly, but also increases the chances of successfully prosecuting the case (in court or otherwise) against the person you believe to have committed this crime.
Quite frankly, stating “by the way, I believe this person to have committed crime X” in a post tangentially related to that person seems one of the worst possible ways to go about the matter.
I specifically chose examples where I believe this is not the case. As I understand the situations:
Polanski has pled guilty to some of what I accuse him of. He denies other parts, which he has not been tried for. I don’t know in what parts of the process a jury would have been involved. (Also, the guilty plea was part of a deal, and I think plea deals have a substantial rate of false confessions.)
Simpson denies it and was famously acquitted by a jury. He was later found liable in a civil trial. I don’t know if a jury would have been involved in that.
Prosecuting the person is not my goal here. If I do think about the effect of me-saying-something on the chances of the person getting convicted, my guess is that the effect is probably tiny but more likely to lean positive than negative.
If you think the effect is likely substantially negative to the extent that it’s worth getting legal advice, I’d like to hear more detail.