I don’t think it’s that simple at all. It’s not incompetence as much as it is indifference. Prosecutors are bent on securing convictions, and judges are scared to let criminals walk even where it means enforcing their rights (I see this first hand everyday). It’s not the inherent inaccuracy with having random people determine the facts of an event they did not observe first-hand. It’s a willingness to believ the ID of a witness even after they got it wrong twice, or to withhold exculpatory evidence because the cops “just know” this guy is guilty. There is a rhyme and reason to these mistakes, it’s that people are aggressively trying to put away people they believe are criminals.

Oh, and it’s clearly worse to convict an innocent man than it is to let a guilty one go free. If you disagree, you are welcome to go start your own country.

Radley, I think your articel is great, but you missed the real impact of the appellate system. It is impossible and kind of silly to have appellate court re-try the case, and so their rightful role is to review the procedure and fairness of the overall trial and only overturn for problems of substance in extreme cases. (Otherwise we no longer have a jury system, really.) So that means then that the appellate courts aren’t overturning convinctions because the proceedures and fairness ARE being carried out properly and people are STILL being convicted. I think that is what you are saying but I’m concerned that one might read your article as a criticism of the appeals process. While there are valid criticisms there, such as failure to respond when innocence is proven outright, the problem mainly lies with police and prosecutors and how even when they play by the rules and within the procedural safeguards, inocent people are going to jail. Appellate courts are somewhat impotent by nature, and so we must focus on having accurate criminal trial courts.

While people who are apart of it all know it is not infallible they believe that it should be treated as if it was. They want us to act as if the system cannot make a mistake if it follows the popper procedures. Thus they are quite prepared to overturn a verdict on procedural grounds but are very unwilling to admit that all the proper procedures can be followed and they can still come up with the wrong verdict. They are very unwilling to say that a jury simply got it wrong.

The adversary system also easily degenerates into a game with a game-player’s ideas of fairness. They say that a defendant has had his chance and the rules of the game should be respected even if it leads to an injustice.

They are aiming for an impossible certainty and want us to act as if they can actually achieve it. The words finality and fairness reflect their aspirations. Finality should be abandoned. The pretense of its accomplishment comes at too high a price. Fairness should be stripped of its game-playing connotations. It should be reduced to lack of bias.educed to lack of bias.

Justice Winds
http://justicewinds.blogspot.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgWrV8TcUc

One thing that might help get the stereotypical law and order types on the right side of this is to hammer home the point that every conviction of an innocent means the guilty party is still out there, and has gotten away with their crime.