Whatever happened to reasonable doubt, innocent until proven guilty, all that stuff?

What kind of court routinely convicts people who didn't actually do the crime?

The thing that happened to "all that stuff" is called the War on Drugs. It blended in to pretty seamlessly into the War on Terror.

The word "routinely" might be contentious, because we have almost no numbers on it and the law has a way of making things "true" despite reality, but the kind of court you're referring to is just called a court.

You might google the Innocence Project, if you're interested in this sort of thing.

The comments here are overselling the situation. Yes possession of certain child porn images is a crime regardless of intent. However prosecutions are no different from any other crime: they must prove the crime before a jury of your peers beyond a reasonable doubt. There's nothing automatic about it.

This topic always drives hyperbole here on HN and I'm not sure why. Investigators and prosecutors don't waste time trying to entrap innocent web developers. They are kept plenty busy by people who are actually making or distributing child porn. Source for that: I know someone who prosecutes child porn cases. He is kept incredibly busy with obvious scumbag criminals.

Law enforcement's ultimate goal is always to walk the chain of possession back to find the folks who are actually making the imagery--who are actually abusing kids. That is why there is strict liability for possession. It gives investigators a lever to flip distributors to help find the sources.

> who didn't actually do the crime?

Possession of narcotics is a crime, isn't it?

Possession seems to be a very nebulous concept in English and US law (probably because of their common law systems).

In contrast, German law defines possession as "having effective control" (with some more nuance obviously). Possession is also entirely different from ownership in German law. I can not control an object I have no knowledge of. If you place an object in my house, I only gain possession of it once I discover it.

I think this is one of the cases where the civil law approach of rigorous definitions is clearly superior to the common law approach of establishing precedent.

I'm not sure if you're joking or not—but I'm answering anyway.

Surely you don't think you should be the one going to prison if someone broke into your house and planted 10 kilograms of cocaine under your mattress?

I'm being serious.

> Surely you don't think you should be the one going to prison

I don't think you "should" go to prison, but I'm saying that's likely how it would go down. So it's analogous to the files on a computer situation.

something being on your property is not the same as possessing it

Tell that to the judge

In the US it's not obvious that an anonymous tip would establish probable cause for a search.