Is "There's no smoke without fire" the worst phrase in the English language?

You may have seen press coverage recently of the newly-published autobiography of Dave Jones, now manager of Cardiff City. His story is not a happy one, although he emerges from it as someone of courage, dignity, forgiveness and basic human decency.

In 1999, when Mr Jones was the successful manager of Southampton, he was falsely accused of child abuse from a time when (in the mid 1980s) he worked part-time in a Merseyside school for children with educational and behavioural difficulties. The allegations were entirely made up - his (still anonymous) accusers admitted as much - by a group of former pupils at the school who were themselves in prison at the time. Despite there being no evidence against Mr Jones whatsoever, the allegations were made public, he lost his job and spent £400,000 clearing his name. His family went through goodness-only-knows-what trauma (including a visit from his local social services department to see whether his four children should be taken into care) and Mr Jones to this day endures deeply unpleasant chants from opposing 'fans' at grounds across the country. Tragically, Mr Jones believes that the news of his arrest caused his previously healthy father to fall into a coma from which he never recovered - something Mr Jones blames on the police leaking the story to the press.

And yet he was innocent. In addition to his accusers admitting that they concocted the whole thing (Mr Jones was one of a number of people against whom allegations were made, some of whom were wrongly imprisoned), one alleged at the trial that the police helped him to plug holes in his evidence.

At the end of the trial, the judge made a telling comment: "No doubt there will be people who are going to think there is no smoke without fire. I can do nothing about that except to say such an attitude would be wrong. No wrong-doing whatsoever on your part has been established."

If any good can come from this unpleasant tale, I would hope that society stops attributing guilt to people who have been accused (whether rightly or wrongly) but not found guilty of a crime. Lawyers, especially those involved in criminal defence work, are often pilloried for defending people who society assumes must be guilty. And yet, as Mr Jones's own experience shows, you only have to be falsely accused of a crime to appreciate the importance of the presumption of innocence in our legal system. As he himself admits "You know, that is a phrase that I used to use a lot. 'No smoke without a fire'. It just seems obvious that if there is a controversy surrounding someone, then something has to be wrong. But that is not a phrase you would hear me saying now. I have learnt the hard way that it is possible to be accused without there being a shred of truth". To help make the point, Mr Jones's book is simply called "No Smoke, No Fire".

That's not to say that those found guilty of crimes should not be punished in accordance with the law - rather, a serious plea that we avoid reaching our own judgment on people until the judicial process has run its course. I hope you agree.