That’s really the right solution. That having been said, I think the previous poster’s point is sound: the whole purpose of the criminal prosecution system is supposed to be to minimize harm caused to innocents whom bad things befall. Attempts to minimize such harm will necessarily require taking a very strong interest in avoiding the prosecution of innocent people. Among other things, since prosecution of innocents takes resources and impetus away from pursuing the guilty. Further, if prosecutors are allowed to get away with taking “shortcuts”–prosecuting whomever they can find without regard for actual guilt–some will likely take advantage.

I short, one shouldn’t refrain from punishing a criminal because of a vanishingly small chance that he might be innocent, but nor should one be indifferent to the wrongful prosecution of innocents. If one wants to prosecute the guilty, then one should focus on prosecuting *only* the guilty.

ANY system that punishes the guilty will also at least occasionally punish the innocent accidentally. A system that NEVER punishes the innocent is one that never punishes ANYONE.

That’s a false dichotomy. You can still have a system with a very high standard of evidence. Perhaps some people who are guilty, but not provably so, will go free. A great many other criminals still have more than enough evidence against them, many are caught red-handed during the commission of their crime.

But that’s not our current standard. Our current standard allows for anyone to spend decades in prison, or sometimes get put on death row, based on nothing more than the testimony of a few eye witnesses. And then after the fact, if some evidence of provable innocence or police / prosecutor misconduct comes forwards it can take years, even decades, to free them.

One of the most damning aspects of our system is the degree to which institutions of justice actively resist setting innocent people free, or compensating them.

As such, I think any system that lets 100 go free rather than punish 1 innocent is INSANE – those 100 will go do far for damage than is done to the 1.

This is the ethics of scapegoating. Honestly, if other peoples lives have so little value to you that you are willing to throw them away so as to feel more comfortable about criminals being in jail then you are a complete and total monster. Who the fuck are you to demand that other peoples lives be ruined so that you can sleep better at night? I would rather deal with the criminals myself than authorize the state to destroy the lives of innocents, anything less than that would be a personally damning act of extreme cowardice.

That is some legal philosophers’ objective, not “the” objective.

But the law and order right wing will continue to lament how the system lets bad guys “slip through the cracks” and how we need to toughen up our system and make it harder for them to get exonerated.

Fucking people all need to go spend a decade behind bars for something that they didn’t do, then come out and tell me that.

The objective is to minimize the number of innocents who have bad things befall them. WHO does the bad thing is really not relevant.

As such, an agent of the state killing someone who didn’t deserve is essentially the same (for this purpose) as a random murderer doing it. Wrongly imprisoning someone for 20 years is the essentially same as kidnapping them for 20 years (well, but still letting them have visits phone calls? it doesn’t analogize perfectly).

So, the objective is to find the balance where the least amount of bad stuff is done to innocent people. ANY system that punishes the guilty will also at least occasionally punish the innocent accidentally. A system that NEVER punishes the innocent is one that never punishes ANYONE.

As such, I think any system that lets 100 go free rather than punish 1 innocent is INSANE – those 100 will go do far for damage than is done to the 1.

I make no claim to know exactly where the line is, and I certainly think our current system has horrendous incentives that make it more likely to punish the innocent than the guilty in many cases (among other problems, many of which are correctable), but seeking some idealized perfection is just as crazy as authoritarians seeking Utopia through mass execution of the “bad” parts of society.

The only way to “beat” the State is to flee it and try to live a life of non-violence.

One man against the state and that’s sadly always the case.

“The State always wins. The State is almighty. All praise The State.”

http://news.yahoo.com/california-measure-repeal-death-penalty-qualifies-ballot-004636508.html

At least they’ll have the chance to do the right thing.

“How do you even argue with people like that?”

Get them to interact with more cops outside of their safe zones. A friend of mine is in law school right now and while he grew up in Long Beach during the riots, his classmates are mostly affluent kids right out of college. Needless to say he hears a lot of interesting theories about how cops behave vs. how they actually behave coming from his classmates.

The cops put a lot of effort into propagating this notion that they are noble heroes. For the people that don’t have to routinely deal with aggressive law enforcement in their own neighborhoods it’s an easy myth to swallow. The police don’t treat anyone with any sign of affluence as badly as they do the obviously poor, or the obviously black.

@#7 and #8 Goober – One of the more depressing moments in my life came in a con law class where the prof asked the class what they thought the balance should be between the risk of letting the guilty go free versus the risk of wrongfully imprisoning the innocent and most in the class said 50/50 seemed reasonable. Even worse, a few even thought it was more important to make sure the guilty did not go free even if that meant lots of innocent people went to jail. After talking to them a bit, it became apparent that they seriously believed that even if the standard of proof were to be dropped to “preponderance of evidence” rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt” not many innocent people would go to jail. And what made them think this? “Because if you were innocent, the cops wouldn’t have arrested you.” That’s right, the assumption really is that if the cops arrested you it must be because you did something wrong. Guilty until proven innocent. How do you even argue with people like that?

What IS clear is that the prosecution and/or the police agency involved screwed up and were dishonest. This does NOT automatically translate to an assumption that he didn’t do the murder.

The tone here seems to be off in that regard.

More injustice will follow, as any restitution he receives will come from taxes. Those responsible will pay nothing.

This happens enough that no one can legitimately claim to be suprised anymore, and yet every November, the voters put the same people back in charge.

In some sense, the taxpayers are those responsbile.

I can’t recall a single time when one of these guys expressed anger or bitterness after getting out. Even in cases of gross misconduct by government officials.

If you’d already lost decades of your life due to arbitrary action of government, you might be loathe to attract their attention by publically condemning them.

DPirate…as in “Law Abiding Citizen”? Though a bit different in circumstances. Great movie until the end.

Yeah, I wanted to see a different ending. One a lot more Biblical. That would have been awesome.

I’d like to think I’d be as gracious. But I kinda’ doubt it.

Well, that guy knows for a fact and first hand how the “Justice System” works… no matter how he really feels, I expect he’s just smiling and nodding to avoid undue additional attention from it.