Innocent till proven Guilty

I couldn't find any reference to democratic countries who do not have the presumption of innocence as part of their criminal justice system. My belief is that this is such an important principle as to be an essential part of the term "democracy". You cannot really be a democracy if the presumption of innocence is not part of your legal system, the same way you can't really be a democracy without free and equal elections.

That being said, I'll add that the criminal procedure law some Civil Law countries, mainly in Europe, avoids the statement that "a person in considered innocent until proven guilty", and instead states that "a person in considered not guilty until he court finds otherwise". The reason for the slight change is the will not to put a "moral stamp" of innocence on a person, who may not be downright "guilty", but cannot be said to be "innocent", in the wider. moral, sense of the word.

For more - I refer you to this Wikipedia article.

Hope I helped.

Even if the entire "legal system" follows the rule of "innocent until proven guilty", there ARE very common instances in which the Legal System operates differently, meaning, you are Punished on-the-spot and it is Your burden to prove your innocence.

Examples of such instances:

(1) When you get a Parking Ticket for parking in an ILLEGAL spot -- hey, the policeman just "convicted" you and punished you on-the-spot, without even hearing what you have to say, and without you even being there!  Maybe it was a medical emergency? Maybe the policeman did not see that you actually were Allowed to park there, by a special permit?  Even if you have no excuse, the situation remains: you were "convicted" of a criminal offence, and punished, without saying a single word.

 (2) Some criminal offences are defined as "Strict Liability" offenses, in which you are convicted just for "doing" what you did, even if you had the best excuse in the world.  In some countries, for example, if you drive your car at night, and the car hits a bump on the road, and the Rear Light breaks down because of it, and you keep on driving WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING that your rear light is dead -- a policeman can stop you and can FINE you on-the-spot.

Re Joel - 

In the cases Joel stated, one can choose not to pay the fine and instead go to trial in front of a judge, where he can have an attorney and the opportunity to raise all the claims he can think of against the fine. If one chooses to pay the fine, it can be looked at it as though he admitted that he did make an offense and that he's willing to pay the price for it.

Another remark regarding the "strict liability": The meaning of the term is that the prosecution doesn't need to prove criminal intent of any kind (negligence included) in order to secure conviction. In other criminal offenses the prosecution must prove that:

(A) The defendant did a specific act;

(B) That he had criminal intent, at some level (intention, negligence etc.), to do the crime.

In strict liability offenses, the prosecution only needs to prove element (A) in order to secure conviction. That is, even here the accused has the presumption of innocence on his side.

JAPAN for one. Their system operates on the "Where there is smoke, there must be fire" theory. Take our system, reverse it and you will have a pretty fair picture of the Japanese system. For one thing, your "attorney does NOT have the RIGHT to converse with you and is treated as any other visitor would be. There is no habeas corpus rule and you do not have the right to confront your accusers nor the "right" to cross examine witnesses against you! In short, if you are charged you are guilty until YOU prove the contrary. The ACLU would have massive strokes over there.

A second thought: In Joel's reply he stated that when given a ticket by the police you have been judged guilty! A form of defacto trial. Wrong. A ticket is only an accusation and a summons to court. A ticket is issued in LIEU of arrest. The ticket serves as notice that this officer is going to go to court and bring a charge against you; you and have only been charged with an offense and on that day and at that time, YOU PROMISE to be present to put forth YOUR DEFENCE. That is why it says that in signing the ticket "You agree to appear and signing the ticket is NOT an admission of guilt.Now of course the ticket issuer THINKS you are guilty, that is why he has written the ticket,but that does not mean you ARE guilty in the eyes of a court, usually.Habeas Corpus.  Now whether or not you have a good story is a different kettle of fish. Let's face it, in the real world, all countries believe in guilty until proven innocent. Whenever you hear about a crime and an arrest you will  that the person is guilty or else why would they have been arrested??? The OJ trial is primo evidence of all those theories.