Questions About Interpreting and Applying the Constitution | The Coetzee 1997 Case

An argument by counsel that the prevalence of white-collar crime justified placing an onus on accused persons in a position of authority to prove that they did not know of and abet wrongdoing on their watch, prompted Justice Sachs to pronounce in a separate judgment as follows: There is a paradox at the heart of all criminal procedure, in that the more serious the crime and the greater the public interest in securing convictions of the guilty, the more important do constitutional protections [such as the presumption of innocence] of the accused become. This statement was later picked up and cited with approval by senior judges in England.