A noble effort by Paul Ohm at Freedom to Tinker, Being Acquitted Versus Being Searched (YANAL):
With this post, I'm launching a new, (very) occasional series I'm calling YANAL, for “You Are Not A Lawyer.” In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system).
Funnily enough, that's how I got my start as an Internet lawyer. Back in the early '90s there were a lot of software engineers writing a great deal of nonsense about the US Constitution on USENET. When they used these mistaken priors to (mis)explain the law relating to the Clipper Chip, I decided to write a short 10-12 page article on the regulation of cryptography, just to set the record straight.
One hundred and sixty pages (and one case of carpal tunnel) later, I had an article.
Good luck, Paul, you'll need it!
If anyone thinks that the “innocent until proven guilty” thing protects them then they ought to go google “Julie Amero” who got her felony conviction thrown out only because she was lucky but was eventually worn down into pleading guilty to a misdemeanor.