Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation.

-- Thomas Fielding

Somebody should say it, so I guess it will be me, but Betty Neumar, that 76-year-old west Augusta woman charged with asking someone to kill her husband, is innocent.

I know it every time I see her oddly surprised mug shot in this paper or on TV, where she seems often portrayed ("... some call her the Black Widow ...") as the clever crook Angela Lansbury used to catch once a week on Murder, She Wrote .

But Ms. Neumar is not a TV character. She's an old woman with a curious habit of having husbands die on her.

And she's innocent.

The cops know it. The judges know it. You should know it, too. That's because this is America and anyone -- you, me and Ms. Neumar -- is innocent until a jury says otherwise.

It's that simple, though we so often forget it.

Now, I'm not saying she didn't ask someone to kill her husband in rural North Carolina back in the mid-1980s. In fact, the sheriff up there seems to think he's got a good case.

I guess we'll eventually find out the truth. Until we do, however, it is unfortunate that we so often associate being charged with being guilty.

It's not the same thing. Let me tell you why.

Let me tell you about my Uncle Tom.

Tall, athletic, smart -- the first person in my family's recorded history to attend college, Uncle Tom was a Marine during Korea. He came home, got a job, started a family and ended up in banking. Lived comfortably.

Then in the late 1970s, he got cancer. The doctor gave him the bad news on a bad day. You see, on the way home from that doctor visit, he heard a car radio news report say a federal grand jury had just indicted him in some illegal loan scheme.

It was in the paper the next day, too.

The case went to trial. On its second day, the federal judge stopped the proceedings, ordered a directed verdict of not guilty and reprimanded the federal prosecutor for wasting everyone's time.

He even asked my uncle whether he would like to make any public statement before everyone went home, and Uncle Tom pointed to the newspaper reporter in the courtroom and said, "Get my name right."

I'd like to tell you everything worked out after that, but it didn't. The bank said the publicity was bad for business and he should go. The cancer, however, stayed.

He fought it for about another 10 years before dying.

Ironically, the federal government that had once tried to prosecute him didn't forget him at the end. It buried him with military honors in one of its cemeteries surrounded by comrades who are at his side through eternity.

They fought for a country where crime has to be proved and where being accused isn't the same as being convicted.