The issues of whether a person’s statements are factually true, and whether a person had a reasonable belief that his statements were true at the time they made them, are somewhat separate. To find someone of perjury, a jury should find beyond a reasonable doubt not only that the person made false statements, but that the person either knew to be false or was wantonly indifferent to their truthfulness or lack thereof. If someone caught lying on the stand, it might be good to have the jury who witnessed the testimony in question decide the perjury charge, but the person should be allowed to present testimony and arguments as to why they believed their statements to be true.

I concur that there are no easy answers since what we essentially want is to people behave ethically — the pursuit of justice — instead of their own interest. However, from the perspective of a layperson, I think it is a mistake of judging prosecutors solely by the outcomes instead of their choices since it appears to me that there is too much inherent randomness in the process. Suppose that a conscientious prosecutor will still convict an innocent person 0.1% of all convictions. That would imply that out of 100 convictions you would have a ~10% probability that someone would be innocent. If instead, the above prosecutor had a 0.01% probability, then there would be a 1% probability that someone would be innocent. Now I’m unclear what “beyond a reasonable doubt” broadly means in this context; i.e., is it 99, 99.9, or 99.99 percent certain? Simply based on anecdotes, I suspect that when you carefully evaluate whether the “man on the Clampham omnibus” would convict, you’d be pretty far from 99.99% certain. To some extent, it would be surprising to see prosecutors behave in a different manner than their constituents.

Personally, I think that there needs to be an active set of checks and balances. Perhaps an active branch of the Justice Department that prosecutes civil liberties infractions by prosecutors or a federal mandate that lets civilians sue prosecutors for misconduct in tort law or both.

In Jewish criminal law, an uncorroborated confession is insufficient grounds for conviction.

Under the Mosaic Law, perjury was punished by sentencing the perjurer to the sentence for which the accused would serve if lawfully convicted. Since we’re talking about incentives here, I think sentencing a perjurer to execution for perjuring themselves against someone on trial for capital murder would be an excellent incentive to be honest.

Less than 5% of cases, otherwise, see any Juror dismissed. And the only question you have to answer is if you’ll give both sides a fair hearing. There’s very little you can do to get out of jury service, either (You might be able to get out of long trials if you have your own business, but not service entirely).

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/26/judge-tries-cant-blow-away-cloud-over-michael-crow/

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/not_guilty/coerced_confessions/6.html

Someone should inform Mr Cassell that THIS. ACTUALLY. HAPPENED.

You’re right, I s’pose it’s up to us to force the change. I just really, _really_ hate that the guys w/ the badges are, by far, the least accountable.

I’m quite sure no nation ever really lived up to the Blackstone ratio, but you are right: there is something terrifying about living in a nation where people have stopped even espousing the principle.

We are now trapped between a new monster and an ancient one. New is the nanny state idea that “all bad things require a law”; old is the moralistic notion that “all bad things demand someone be punished.”

If we follow those two premises far enough, there will simply be no innocent people left, and thus no need to worry about protecting them from punishment.

In the college stats class I always teach: Lesson on Type I vs. Type II errors, I always have a short discussion in terms of criminal trials, which to prioritize/which is worse? Letting a guilty man go free, or sending an innocent man to prison?

To date over ~5 years, no one has ever raised Franklin/Blackstone principle. But much more distressingly, for the first time this semester, I saw the student discussion settling on a consensus that the former was clearly worse. (Note that the Wikipedia article identifies this situation as emblematic of a totalitarian state.)

The Nuremburg defense has nothing to do with it. I didn’t say the servants of the state are innocent; I would never say that. I merely said that you won’t get anywhere by focusing your attention on those lowly stooges.

I mean…in 1942, you wouldn’t have tried to change the Nazi regime by saying “what we need is a better class of SS officers” or “I think there should be a rule that former prosecutors be barred from sitting on the Volksgerichtshof.”

Of course not. You would have wanted to see the whole regime abolished! And yet there are plenty of our fellow travelers who think that if we could just get some nicer cops, or maybe tweak a few procedural rules in the courts, these would be somehow be meaningful steps in the right direction.

I’m merely saying that the public is the real villain, and that it is folly to divert our eyes from that.

It’s like the systems is not biased toward being a criminal since clearly for every innocent person put in jail it’s possible that a guilty person is walking free — clearly I don’t think that will apply in this case.

The other “interesting” point that’s this post brings out is the attempts to protect the victim’s rights seems to be taking on a certain “I’m just out for vengeance and want to be sure someone else suffers.” and not really about protecting victim’s rights or identifying the bad people.

For my own opinion, i think justice is the fairest when both sides of a litigation spend equally.

In civil suits there is no real way to make that happen.

I see no reason why it shouldn’t happen in cases where government controls the money spent on lit-related svcs on both sides.

Why specifically, do you think tere would be a differential? Is there a differential in the military system? Is so, why?

[...]It’s a Long Road to Better | The Agitator[...]…

…most absurdly, cops (who are merely the enlisted rank servants of the state).

Ah, the Nuremburg Defense. Well, hey – why not? “Your Honor, I was ordered to place that man in the 450 degree oven! It’s not my fault!”

Sorry, no. I cannot accept this. Perhaps only in the sense that We the Little People [™, ©, patent pending], stand up to the boot lickers, perhaps with force, and take back our dignity.

Never. Talk. To. The. Cops. Without. Your. Attorney. Present. Clear enough?

Well, let’s not take any chances on clarity of the message:
NEVER. TALK. TO. THE. COPS. WITHOUT. YOUR. ATTORNEY. PRESENT.

There. FIFY.

STFU! (Shut The F*** Up). Understand?