The Innocence Tax’s philosophical underpinning can only be read one of two ways: either as an inversion of the presumption of innocence, a sly wink to our worse selves that an accused is always in some way responsible for his being corralled into the justice system. Or it is a concession that though accused people may well be genuinely innocent, so little does the average voter understand or care about the criminal courts that rampant butchery of the rule of law can be gotten away with unscrutinized.
