A reason the word, “travesty,” was invented Leave a reply First, remember that the Standing Judicial Commission is an entity past which there are no appeals. What they do in this case cannot be undone by the General Assembly. A wronged defendant has no appeal. This is a high-wire act without a net. There are to my mind unanswerable arguments against setting up this kind of mechanism in the first place, but if you have that mechanism in place it is absolutely crucial that you take every precaution against a possible miscarriage of justice. Having it fixed in your mind what the burden of proof actually is would be one of those precautions. Having the verdict established about such things through the means of trials would be another. Now, meditate on this. The PCA has stumbled into a situation where an entire presbytery is approaching a trial (her first trial), and that presbytery does not have the presumption of innocence going into it.