better to imprison an innocent man than to let any guilty go free?

S

SmarterthanYou

rebel
when this nation was created, the founders firmly believed that it was better to let 10 guilty men go free than to imprison an innocent one.
I know at least one person here believes that it's better to have innocent people wrongly convicted and imprisoned instead of letting any guilty person escape justice.
The below is just a partial of the end result of that belief.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57438010/study-2000-convicted-then-exonerated-in-23-years

More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.

There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.

The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.

They found that those 873 exonerated defendants spent a combined total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an average of more than 11 years each. Nine out of 10 of them are men and half are African-American.
Click to expand...
 
Additionally....

A new report by the National Registry of Exonerations, a joint project of Michigan and Northwestern law schools, chronicles over 2000 cases where a person convicted of a crime was later exonerated between 1989 and 2012. More than half of these exonerated persons “were cleared since 1995 in 13 ‘group exonerations,’ that occurred after it was discovered that police officers had deliberately framed dozens or hundreds of innocent defendants, mostly for drug and gun crimes.” Perhaps most distressingly, however, 101 of the exonerated individuals were convicted of murder and sentenced to die — nearly all of whom spent years or even decades behind bars before their criminal conviction was eventually overturned.
Click to expand...

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/20...eople-sentenced-to-die-were-later-exonerated/
 
No, it is far better to have 100 guilty go free than one innocent go to jail. That is the reason we have the presumption of innocent until proven guilty. That is the reason prosecution must show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That said, we are human and we will make mistakes. Look at the Zimmerman/Martin case. That has been so publicized now that many people have already made up their minds as to the guilt/innocence of Zimmerman. Yet I doubt any of those people have seen all of the facts of the case as many are still coming to light.
 
Superfreak said:
No, it is far better to have 100 guilty go free than one innocent go to jail. That is the reason we have the presumption of innocent until proven guilty. That is the reason prosecution must show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That said, we are human and we will make mistakes. Look at the Zimmerman/Martin case. That has been so publicized now that many people have already made up their minds as to the guilt/innocence of Zimmerman. Yet I doubt any of those people have seen all of the facts of the case as many are still coming to light.
Click to expand...


Unlike the people wrongfully convicted, George Zimmerman actually shot a killed someone.

Good lord.
 
Only 2000 in 23 years ?............. 7,225,800 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, or prison) in 2009


......Thats quite a record......in 23 years there must have been more than 10 million of people tried for serious crimes in the US.....

Thats about .0002% that were questionable.....
 
bravo said:
Only 2000 in 23 years ?............. 7,225,800 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, or prison) in 2009


......Thats quite a record......in 23 years there must have been more than 10 million of people tried for serious crimes in the US.....

Thats about .0002% that were questionable.....
Click to expand...
would you like to know whats sad about your .0002% stat? it always sounds like it's a tiny issue, until you're the one in that .0002%.
 
SmarterthanYou said:
would you like to know whats sad about your .0002% stat? it always sounds like it's a tiny issue, until you're the one in that .0002%.
Click to expand...


Nothing sad about it at all......its plain and truthful recognition that we are fallible human beings.....not some fantasyland idea of impossible perfection.....

its REALITY .....live with it.
 
bravo said:
Nothing sad about it at all......its plain and truthful recognition that we are fallible human beings.....not some fantasyland idea of impossible perfection.....

its REALITY .....live with it.
Click to expand...
it's 'reality' because most people have been brainwashed to think that it's better to trust the government than trust ourselves, that it's highly unlikely that person is really innocent, or he wouldn't be standing trial. It has nothing to do with fallibility of human beings, it has to do with abdicating one's responsibility to it's system of government.
 
christiefan915 said:
Duh. The point is whether it was or wasn't self-defense.
Click to expand...

yes, but no one said otherwise. Dung was being a douche bag. My comment was that many people (due to the publicity of the case) have already decided the case in their minds as to whether he was guilty (murder) or innocent (self-defense). Then Dung brought his normal douche baggery to the thread.
 
Superfreak said:
yes, but no one said otherwise. Dung was being a douche bag. My comment was that many people (due to the publicity of the case) have already decided the case in their minds as to whether he was guilty (murder) or innocent (self-defense). Then Dung brought his normal douche baggery to the thread.
Click to expand...


Your comment was so stupid it practically drooled.
 
Darla said:
LOL
Click to expand...

Funny, notice how the douche bag makes comments like that, but he cannot defend his comments. Or do you really believe that people haven't already made up their minds on a case like Zimmermans? That was the point. That we are human, we make mistakes, like setting our minds on a verdict based on emotion rather than on the facts. Hence people being wrongly convicted. Or do you think those wrongful convictions were all done because people screwed up with the facts?

Ten to one the douche bag won't explain what it is about my comment he found stupid. He is too pathetic to actually elaborate.
 
Jesus christ SF, can't I find something funny without being cross-examined? I am not interested in yet another Zimmerman circle. I just thought what he said was funny.
 
Superfreak said:
Funny, notice how the douche bag makes comments like that, but he cannot defend his comments. Or do you really believe that people haven't already made up their minds on a case like Zimmermans? That was the point. That we are human, we make mistakes, like setting our minds on a verdict based on emotion rather than on the facts. Hence people being wrongly convicted. Or do you think those wrongful convictions were all done because people screwed up with the facts?

Ten to one the douche bag won't explain what it is about my comment he found stupid. He is too pathetic to actually elaborate.
Click to expand...


Not pathetic, just apathetic.
 
General Buck Turgidson said:
Unlike the people wrongfully convicted, George Zimmerman actually shot a killed someone.

Good lord.
Click to expand...

how horrible. much better and safer to have the state actually kill someone wrongfully convicted.

http://news.yahoo.com/wrong-man-executed-texas-probe-says-051125159.html

He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour: Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report out Tuesday found.

Even "all the relatives of both Carloses mistook them," and DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man, said law professor James Liebman.

Liebman and five of his students at Columbia School of Law spent almost five years poring over details of a case that he says is "emblematic" of legal system failure.

DeLuna, 27, was put to death after "a very incomplete investigation. No question that the investigation is a failure," Liebman said.
Click to expand...

but it is the beloved master government after all, mistakes by them are acceptable facts of life if we want to maintain an orderly society.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top