Take the case of John Mark Karr, who is guilty of something, but not the thing he claimed to be guilty of.

People can be so delusional that they will confess to anything. Sometimes they believe it. Sometimes they do it for attention, a kind of legal Munchausen's Syndrome. Sometimes they confess to things that aren't true very deliberately, in order to screw up prosecution for other offenses by tainting the case ("fruit of the poisonous tree").

Scrupulous attention to rules of evidence and to the presumption of innocence, even of people under grave suspicion, will prevent a guilty person from claiming pre-trial prejudice. A side benefit: serious crimes will not be trivialized by pre-prosecution in the press or by repeated exposure to mistaken accusations, exaggerations, and delusional criminal wannabes. The public is already subject to enough attention fatigue from overexposure to all kinds of threats and warnings.

I'm glad that you agree:
I hope the prosecution proves its case beyond any reasonable doubt.
Proof in the court will not shut everyone up, but it will go a long way toward satisfying reasonable people. His family will probably continue to seek his release and monitor his condition, which won't be a measure of whether they're reasonable; one looks out for family regardless.

I'm not saying that David Hicks is not guilty, but that he deserves a trial with the presumption of innocence like anyone else, not even for his own sake, but for all of our sakes, to preserve our justice system. That system is itself under threat from terrorism; the object is to destroy the fabric of Western civilization, of which our justice system is a vital part. If we convict anyone by popular acclaim before the trial, justice takes a real hit.

Some of us here in the States are concerned about transparency of the legal structures being used by our government to arrest, interrogate, try and imprison those designated as terrorists. Transparency safeguards everyone, because it makes abuse of state power much more difficult to practice. Transparency also threatens everyone because it weakens security. Secrecy makes information unavailable to those who would attack us. It's a bargain we make: we can trade freedom for security, or security for freedom in a delicate, dangerous balancing act. Right now, we have much less transparency than I, for one, would like. The people who seek David Hicks's release have made much of this problem.

I don't think much of Hicks's defense attorney taking his case to the public in Australia, either, though I think that, if procedural blocks keep him from seeing prosecution evidence, he has a duty to complain publicly about that, in the US. Legal hog-tying of the defense undermines American criminal law.

Though this may be an unpopular opinion because of lawyers' negative image, I have a lot of confidence in the professional integrity of most of our law enforcement officials and officers of the court. For those without integrity, or who have too much authoritarian zeal, many watchers' vigilance will keep them in check. As long as the legal process is reasonably transparent, we can keep an eye on procedure, and otherwise let the justice professionals do their jobs.