A popular phrase related to American courtrooms and legal processes is "innocent until proven guilty," the concept of which stirs plenty of passionate support. While for some people who use this phrase, the idea might be to not treat someone as guilty before discovering legitimate evidence that they are very likely guilty, the phrase itself is still utterly misleading and erroneous. Called the presumption of innocence, the idea actually expressed by the wording is that someone is literally innocent until someone can prove their guilt--the logical impossibility of proving someone is guilty aside, presuming anything forfeits potential alignment with reason and throws a person into avoidable delusions. It should not take more than a moment or two to realize why this is an epistemologically and metaphysically false idea, at least for a rationalist.
Nothing is true until proven false or false until proven true. In a legal context and in all other aspects of life, it is outright folly to think that something exists or does not exist, is knowable or unknowable, or does or does not have a given nature "until" it has been proven or disproven. All concepts are true or false whether or not a person can prove them or disprove them; moreover, it is logically obvious that no one can prove such a thing, as a whole host of epistemological limitations inherent in human sensory experiences and memories of seemingly past events prevent people from knowing anything more than logical possibilities, personal perceptions, and the necessary truths that are true regardless of what else is. A lie can never be proven, only assumed to be true, but a truth is never inconsistent with other truths and is true even if it cannot be proven.
The very notion of assuming one way or another by default is antithetical to a love of truth and justice. No one genuinely considered with treating people as they deserve will presume that they are innocent or guilty of a particular act. Epistemological neutrality is the only rational default stance towards guilt or innocence in a legal setting, and it also is the only valid starting point in assessing someone's guilt in a broader moral context. Simply assuming that someone did or did not commit a deed one did not even witness deeply contradicts the supposed goal of just treatment. There is far more to justice than this, and there are far more important aspects as well (ensuring no one is given an inherently inhumane punishment is more important than never punishing innocent people, for example), but asinine philosophical approaches to justice like believing someone is literally innocent until proven guilty or vice versa come into play before the courtroom.
No one needs to make one assumption to avoid another; simply avoiding assumptions altogether will already exclude presuming guilt in a moral or legal sense. The presumption of innocence, expressed so commonly by the phrase "innocent until proven guilty," is just as asinine as the presumption of guilt, or the belief that someone is "guilty until proven innocent." What is true is true, and thus to automatically believe one way or the other about a matter of someone else's guilt is inherently irrational. Moreover, I cannot know anything more than logical possibilities and incomplete or potentially misleading sensory evidences in favor of someone's guilt or innocence, meaning it would be irrational for me or any being with my limitations to actually believe someone is innocent or guilty on the basis of anything short of assumption-free logical proof, something beyond human reach.
Legal trials are not a context where philosophical accuracy and rationalistic knowledge get honored. If the opposite was true, the very use of phrases like "innocent until proven guilty" would never come from the mouths of anyone in governmental authority except to dismiss the ideas behind them as untrue. To reject the idiocy of assuming anything one way or another, though, does not open the door for the tyrannies of assuming a person's guilt. In actuality, it contradicts both the notion that believing someone is innocent without proof is valid and that believing someone is guilty without proof is valid. Since logical proof of either innocence or guilt remains inaccessible behind the limitations of the senses, memory, and disconnection from other minds, what can be known is the possibilities consistent with the necessary truths of logical axioms and the limited evidences beyond that.
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