Which is worse - punishing the innocent, or letting the guilty go free?

Great Debates
1

Which is worse - punishing the innocent, or letting the guilty go free?

Its not a perfect world. Innocents do go to jail, and perpetrators of crimes do end up going scot free (incidentally, why “scot free”?). Its pointless debating how or why it happens, because sometimes the law can be interpreted only that far. Or maybe sometimes, the lawyers are just that smart.

Anyway, what I’d like to know is: which one is the worse evil?

I personally believe that punishing the innocent is the worst that you can do. But at the same time, I also think that allowing the guilty to go free, whatever the circumstances, only encourages them to carry on doing whatever it is they did, and perhaps go a few steps further.

Conversely, it could very well scare them into living out the rest of their lives decently. But I tend towards punishing innocents as being worse. What say the Teeming Millions?

2

oops… forgot about the title showing up anyways…

3

It depends on
– whether the guilty continue to commit crimes
– to what degree punishing the guilty deters crime

I’d say, it’s better to punish a single innocent individual than to let a murderer go free, if that murderer subsequently kills several other innocent indivuduals.

This feels like an odd principle. One problem is that at the time of trial, it’s unknown what crimes the defendant might commit in the future. And, the deterence value of punishment is also speculative.

4

Much much worse to send an innocent man to jail. That is a continuing day to day injustice perpetrated bodily on a person. A guilty man being free may bother our sensibilities for retribution, and if they are a continuing danger is certainly potentially a bad thing. But unless the guilty man is simply getting of to continue in his criminal enterprises, or at least very likely to commit violent acts again, it just doesn’t compare to depriving a man of his freedom without any hint of legitimate reason.

5

The bald face truth is that quite a few ‘guilty’ people go free absolutely every single day. Many crimes are unsolved. Some are even unreported (a missing person may indeed be a murder case for example. and frankly I don’t know of anyone who has called to report to the police “hey, I’m in possession of controlled substances…”)

It is far more repugnant to me that an innocent would be punished.

We are not able to punish all of the guilty. That will never, ever be able to happen.

We can however, do our damndest to insure that we do not punish the innocent, and I believe that we must do that.

6

If you punish a single innocent individual, then by definition, you’ve already let the guilty party go free. Only now you’ve compounded the error by ausing an innocent to suffer.

7

Thank you, pld. The OP presents a false choice - if one punishes the innocent, one is, by definition, letting the guilty go. Conversely, if one lets the guilty go, one is either (a) punishing the innocent or (b) not punishing anyone at all.

Sua

8

Punishing the innocent is far worse. Discovering who commited a crime is a difficult task. Right now there is pressure on district attorneys and police to “solve” crimes by getting someone convicted for them as quickly as possible. As mentioned, this often allows both the true guilty party to go free while robbing another person of their freedom or even their life. I’ve been reading about several recent cases of DNA evidence unequivocally exonerating someone who was convicted for a crime on pretty flimsy evidence. In several cases, police extracted confessions from the person after long interrogations.

We need to accept that it is not always possible to discover who commited every crime. By demanding the impossible of law enforcement, we only make things worse.

9

Sua,

Unfortunately not necessarily. Check out this CNN story. http://www.cnn.com/2002/LAW/09/04/toobin.king.trial.otsc/index.html

2 people are being tried for the same crime. In this case, if one did it, it means the other didn’t. Both trials are being help (almost) simultaneously. It’s quite possible both will be convicted.

Very messed up.

10

December, taking the example of your murderer allowed to walk free, are there any studies which show that such people actually go ahead and continue in their murderous ways, perhaps emboldened by their escape from the law? If not, how can you assume that all such criminals will walk out of the courtroom and continue doing whatever the hell he/she please? Wouldn’t it then be worse to have an innocent person convicted of a crime he or she didn’t commit? This action could conceivably result in the innocent chap turning criminal once he completes his sentence.

Sua, punishing the innocent doesn’t necessarily imply letting the guilty go free - the guilty one may never have been under trial, e.g. a person being set-up by an unknown. If a good case is presented, the innocent one may be convicted without the guilty one ever coming into the picture, i.e. no scope for “letting him go”. Same goes for (a) of our second point. I agree with (b) though.

11

I think Sua meant “letting him go” as in: he is as free to go as any guilty person who never gets caught.

12

This argument has come up before. I still maintain that it’s better to let a person go free because there’s reasonable doubt of guilt rather than imprison somebody who “might have” committed a crime.

13

IMHO They are both equally bad, injustice is injustice. What matters is why it happened.

If an innocent person is ‘punished’ because the powers knew he was innocent or that evidence against him was insufficient and went ahead anyway the powers deserve severe punishment indeed, though this rarely happens. If it was incompetence or negligence they deserve to lose their job and never be given public trust again. If it was an honest mistake, then it’s an accident like any other on one is to blame. You shouldn’t shut down justice just because people are human and make mistakes. That would be the greatest crime of all.

14

No, I don’t think that it has to be a false dilemna.

You’re on a jury, and you are borderline on whether or not the person commited the crime. Of course, you would like to be correct about it, as everyone would.

The question is, would you rather send the person to jail with the risk that the person is completely innocent, and you are punishing an innocent. Or, would you release the person, possibly letting someone off the hook to possibly kill again, and it would be partially your fault if someone else got arreseted and thrown in jail for the same crime.

I interperet the OP not as someone putting a gun to your head and giving you a choice between releasing Hannibal Lecter or lobbing Mother Teresa in jail.

But that’s just my interperetation. I might be completely off base. I would tend to let the guilty go free than to jail the innocent.

15

Not necessarily. Its possible to punish the innocent for a crime that never happened. I remember reading about two brothers who had been convicted of murdering their father and sentenced to hang. They were pardoned when the father suddenly turned up, alive and well. No guilty party freed, because there never was a crime in the first place.

16

autz, that case is indeed an abomination. The worst part is that this travesty is not only being permitted by the judges, but actually abetted. There has been a verdict in the first trial; if that verdict is “guilty,” don’t you think that establishes reasonable doubt in the second trial? But the verdict in the first trial is being sealed. There’s a phrase for that - suppression of exculpatory evidence.

Sua

17

Sua,

Exactly. What are those judges thinking? Will this be overturned on appeal?

18

I think that the answer to the OP depends on a lot of things. First, of course, is the nature of the crime. Is it better to let a shoplifter go free, rather than send an innocent to jail? Sure. Shoplifting isn’t that bad a crime. Murder or rape are different. So let’s say that we’re talking a murder here. First of all, I think that, generally speaking, it is better to let one murderer go free than to jail one innocent. In some cases, that may vary. Consider the OJ case. Everyone “knows” OJ was guilty. I’m pretty sure he did it, too. So let’s pretend he did do it, and got off. Is he really likely to kill again? Probably not. The first time, not to justify it, was a fluke - a crime of passion. He’s not going around murdering people and stealing their jewels, or anything. The worst thing that’s happened as a result of his not going to prison is that Anna Nicole and her beau are left sans justice. Tragic, yes, but not fatally so (no pun intended). If OJ had gone to prison, and he was innocent, though, then we would have subjected an innocent man to years of psychological and likely physical punishment for no reason. Certainly, it would be better to err on the side of his being innocent here.

Now what about someone who’s a serial killer? They killed before, they’re probably going to kill again. If you let the guilty go in this case, there’s a good chance others will die - maybe lots of others. In this case, it may be a good idea to err on the side of a guilty verdict.

Now what about the oft-cited claim “It’s worse to jail an innocent than to let 100/1000/1 million/whatever men go free”? I think it’s bull. If you let 100 murderers go free, and they kill 100 more people, is that really worse than jailing someone innocent? Is it worse than executing someone innocent? Sorry, I don’t think so. Ask the families of the 100 victims - I’m sure they’ll disagree, as well. What about the damage done to the public’s view of the justice system if we punish the innocent? Well, that’s a good point. But I don’t think the public being skeptical of the justice system because it occasionally jails innocents is any better than skepticism due to the justice system repeatedly letting the guilty get off. You can argue “relative justice” if you’d like, but that’s a pretty nebulous concept.

As far as actual studies about the deterence value of punishment, I don’t know about punishment in general, but last year a trio of researchers at Emory university conducted a study on the deterence value of capital punishment in particular. It concluded that each person executed saved between 8 and 28 lives, with a best estimate of about 18 per execution. Ian Murray summarizes the report here:

Jeff

19

The guilty verdict against Chavis is not exculpatory evidence in the sense contemplated by Brady. Nor are the prosecutors withholding it from the defense, which is the wrong that Brady addresses. Instead, the judge has ruled the defense cannot present it. The fact that one jury found certain facts to be true is not relevant to the second jury’s determination.

However, I believe the prosecution should be forbidden from this tactic under the doctrine of equitable estoppel.

  • Rick
20

Whatever happened to the poster with the screenname “God”? I’d like God to come in here and post

In all seriousness, no one ever gets away with evil. The very nature of evil is such that the person who perpetrates it suffers the consequences. (It is unfortunate that they spread suffering to innocent people in the process, but they don’t “get away with it”).

I don’t even consider the issue debatable.