"It's better to let ten guilty men go free...

Great Debates
21

Your argument sounds correct to me, CyberPundit, but, given that each path has a cost to society, and even given that we could establish precisely what the cost is for either case(and I don’t believe that is possible), which cost is acceptable? This seems to be the crux of the capital punishment debate.

I have called myself ultra-conservative, even Draconian, on the issue of law and order. There is no doubt in my mind that some individuals deserve to be and should be removed permanently from society in the most profound way. But I am troubled by that other cost.

Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh are good examples of individuals whose guilt was not in doubt, and who deserved to be punished with death. Merely warehousing such persons and keeping them alive, though away from the rest of us, may protect society from them, but it does nothing to punish them for their heinous crimes. That would seem to me unjust, particularly since the state xpends enormous amounts of money to do that, but provides nothing like parity in aid to their victims. I am certainly not an Old Testament theologian, but I do believe that evil deeds deserve harsh punishment, if only to satisfy the (admittedly primitive) human desire for revenge.

But back to the question. Is satisfying that desire worth the cost? Would the further depredation by the released ten (or whatever number) be greater or less, quantitatively speaking, than the harm done by the state in executing the one? And if the unintentional execution of one innocent could be proven to cost society less overall than the release of the proverbial ten guilty (or any number), has the society the right to take that risk. I’m inclined to say yes, but YMMV.

I see your point about the injustice on both sides, Stoid, but your illustration of executing a 7 year old girl is preposterous. No one has ever suggested executing one innocent of whatever age in order to set free ten or any number of others who are supposed, or even proven, to be guilty. Hyperbole doesn’t really help to clarify the muddy waters of this issue.

Excellent point. And under our current system, a person can be videotaped committing a crime, that videotape seen by many millions, and the perpetrator still may stand before a judge and declare himself not guilty. Then the state must spend a million bucks or so to convict him of the crime everybody knows he committed.

To me the argument comes down to a choice between circumstances, neither of which can provide perfect justice. The way the OP’s question is usually posed makes it sound as if the society is deliberately sacrificng an innocent person in order to protect itself from ten guilty ones. Even if that were true (and it clearly is not), society sacrifices innocents all the time for the supposed greater good. While law-abiding citizens may be at some remote risk of being unjustly convicted of a capital crime, that risk is minute compared to that we ask of soldiers. They may very well make the ultimate sacrifice for “the greater good,” but I don’t believe any clear thinking person would say that was an unacceptable risk, including the soldiers who are in harm’s way.

22

Jeez, Geez, I wasn’t suggesting that anyone ever suggested that either… I was exaggerating to make a point. There seems to be an attitude of “Tough shit” for the innocent by those on the other side. Easy to say if you envision the innocent as some big burly guy who probably is no saint. But that misses the larger philosphical and ethical question. Innocent of the crime is innocent of the crime, and perhaps it would be easier to really understand that if you imagine the innocent as a 7 year old child.

It’s all about values, as far as I’m concerned, and this commingling of “justice” and “pumishment” is annoying. Justice is slippery enough as it is, and generally pretty elusive. I have little interest in “punishment” for most criminals. It doesn’t improve my life, in fact in diminishes it a little bit. I am almost completely lacking in a personal desire to see suffering come to anyone for anything. So it is anathema to me to be willing to make the innocent suffer for the (in my opinion) unhealthy satisfaction of punishing as many guilty as possible.

Before we end up on some dumb tangent about the preceding paragraph, I do indeed desire the incarceration of dangerous persons, to prevent harm coming to others. But once incarcerated, I have no desire to see criminals suffer (for the most part). With a few egregious exceptions, I do not consider anyone to be defined by their most heinous act, and I believe that the vast majority of human beings who have committed crimes are redeemable.

23

It’s an interesting statement, but you have to wonder whether this is just a political slogan, because it certainly doesn’t reflect reality, or what most people would actually do if they were voting.

First of all, I’d like to say that it would be nice if 100% of innocent people could go free. But that is a weird pipe dream. In Illinois, where they have recently put a moritorium on the death penalty, approximately 50% of those sentenced to death were later found to be innocent. (Sorry, no cites.) If one is to extrapolate, that means that juries are wrong half the time in the most serious of cases, yet they convict anyway. And there are less stringent protections in non death penalty cases, and all of these people (all of whom escaped death) nonetheless were incarcerated for long periods of time.

So it would be fair to say that the real world rule is this:

It is better to convict and punish an innocent person than to let the crime go unpunished.

Now, on the face of it, that is an outrageous statement, isn’t it? But it is far closer to reflecting the reality of the criminal justice system than the stupid Voltaire like mealy mouthed crap about letting 10 guilty people go free if there is doubt. Even though that may be the “law”, it is laughable as a reflection of reality.

But wait! You lilly livered liberals are about to be really shocked and probably insulted by where I go next:

You wouldn’t have it any other way. And neither would I. Neither you nor I lift a finger to get the wrongly convicted out of prison, or even to determine who they are. It’s all a bunch of liberal hypocrisy. After all, most of these scum are guilty of something anyway. If that isn’t what you truly believe in your heart, are you working to vindicate a single person in prison anywhere? Except for a few criminal defense lawyers on this board, I can safely and statistically conclude, that no, the loss of freedom of half the people in prison convicted of a crime they did not commit doesn’t disturb your sleep in the slightest. In fact, you sleep better for it, because they are scum merely convicted of the wrong crime. In fact, I’m going to share another statistic with you (sorry, no cites):

American has the highest incarceration rate per capita of any civilization in history. And we all have no problem with that fact to such an extent that we would get off the internet for five minutes to write the governor. We like it that way. At least I do. But I’ve thought about it at length, and I like it that way. In fact I wouldn’t have it any other way.

That’s right, when it comes to freedom for the sake of freedom, when there is good reason to believe that about half of the people languishing in prison are completely innocent of the specific crime for which they are convicted, it becomes apparent that we hate freedom of others more than any other country on earth. That’s right, we incarcerate at a higher rate than any other civilization in history, and half are not guilty of the crimes charged. Shit, we’ve got Joe Stalin and Adolph Hitler combined outstripped as far as taking away freedom goes. And you all go around pretending you love freedom. Well, I’m a conservative, albiet, a truth telling conservative, and I like it that way. Do you know why? Maybe you don’t care about why I, as a conservative, like it that we lock up so many supposedly innocent people. Okay, I’ll tell you:

Look at who those people are. They are scum. They do drugs, they live like pigs, they are filth. I am a lot safer with them locked up.

Oh, and the above logic is no satire, troll, sarcasm or anything of the sort. It is superior logic applied to the facts to reveal reality.

24

Of course there is injustice on both sides, but which is the greater injustice? I would submit that it is the greater injustice to let the guilty go free. By allowing the guilty to go unpunished one tears at the very fabric of law and order in society. People obey laws not because they have any particular desire to do so but because they’ve been 1) indoctrinated in their youth to obey the law and/or 2) to avoid punishment.

Without the possiblity of punishment or even just a reduced possibility of punishment wrong behavior is encouraged. I’ll use the example of speeding. Its against the law to exceed a designated limit, however I see people breaking this law every day. Clearly obedience to the law because it is the law doesn’t work in this case. However, those same people who speed will slow down whenever a police officer goes by. They slowed down because they were just reminded of punishment by the agent of that punishment. As soon as the police officer is out of sight they soon exceed the speed limit. Why? Because the threat of punishment disappeared.

If people start to think that they won’t be punished, or that they have an x% chance (where x is whatever magic number works for them) to avoid punishment, the likelihood that they will commit a crime increases.

If you could indoctrinate people into following the law to the point where punishment isn’t necessary, I would be all for it. But I don’t think it will ever happen, if only because teaching people about obeying rules and laws often comes with some sort of mechanism for punishment.

25

Speak for yourself.

Bad example. Try using an example that involves moral choices. Speed limits are morally neutral. Laws against rape, murder and theft are not. Even if all laws against these things were removed, I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t rush out to kill a few people and steal everything they have.

Cite, please. And again, let’s work with crimes that have a moral/ethical component.

And the rest of your post is beside the point. This isn’t a debate about setting all laws aside, it’s a debate/discussion about a guiding principal of how the laws should be applied and enforced. Is it your guiding principal that punishment is the most important aspect of a justice system, damn the consequences?

26

Now, I hate to contradict someone who boasts of his “superior logic,” but I’m going to have to object to this rather specious chain of conclusions.

Do you care about welfare reform? If so, why aren’t you out there checking up on your local welfare recipients, and reporting them to the government?

Do you care about keeping drugs off the streets? Why aren’t you busting drug dealers right now? If you aren’t, you obviously don’t care.

You must love the fact that people are starving to death all over the world right now, because I don’t see you taking food to shelters, or traveling to Africa, or growing crops to distribute.

I would be careful about jumping to conclusions like that, frankly. Just because there’s general public apathy about an issue (at least insofar as they aren’t pounding pavement) doesn’t mean that it isn’t a serious issue, and doesn’t need addressing, especially when it comes to institutional problems like the justice system. That’s not exactly an edifice you can attack by just going after it with a cardboard placard or a bunch of ballpoint pens.

Or are you really suggesting that no one can hold any belief without taking direct, personal participatory action in it?

In other words, please don’t try reading my mind. I have enough problems keeping it straight as it is!

27

Ok, you think differently, what do you think? Why do people obey the law? I need something to work with or this will just descend into “yuh-huh” versus “nuh-huh”

Why is speeding a bad example? Those laws exist to promote safety. Speeding is endangering the lives of those in and around your car. I think there is some morality attached to avoiding the killing or injuring of other people.

But ok, theft. You don’t know anybody who steals from the office? Pens, pencils, paper, that sort of thing? Or if they work at a fast food place and take extra food for themselves or give food away to their friends? It is theft, they’re taking that which does not belong to them and I can in fact remember having employers state that it was theft, punishable by law, that you’d be fired, etc. Despite all that, I can’t name a single person I’ve ever known in my life that didn’t steal from their workplace. Why? I would say either they don’t see it as wrong (not indoctrinated well) or they aren’t afraid of being punished.

As for cites, are you telling me you’ve never heard anyone say “I’d get caught” as a reason for not doing a criminal act? How about someone saying “Is anybody watching?” and then stealing some item if the answer is no?

Any “citing” done on this sort of thing will point to a survey asking exactly those questions. I’ve been trained to put together these kinds of surveys and do research on “social” issues and have a friend who does it as his career. That is about as complicated and as scientific as they get.

The guiding principle of a justice system is punish those who have done an evil to society, whatever that society decides is evil. That, in theory, is what the courts do, seperate the guilty from the innocent and punish the guilty. What the OP seemed to be saying is that it was more just to punish the one innocent if the alternative were to not punish the guilty because the guilty would cause more crime. If you follow the principle of letting the guilty go free to spare the innocent then you reinforce criminal behavior which in turn can put society in danger. Putting the society at risk in exchange for a few individuals is foolish.

28

Hey, I told you to speak for yourself. You were speaking for everyone, and without anything but opinion to back it up. I certainly don’t obey most laws because I fear punishment. I obey them because I have no desire to do most things which are illegal because I wouldn’t like myself. I have a moral center that has nothing to do with the law.

So on the one hand, you are trying to prove that laws keep us from doing bad, and on the other, telling us that everyone you know is a thief?

You have merely proven ** my ** point: most people behave in a manner consistent with their own internal moral compass, not in response to outside laws. Everyone you know feels no moral compunction about stealing from the office. I’m making a WAG that they aren’t a bunch of murderers or that they are all ok with bankrobbing, except for those pesky laws. And on the other hand, the world is filled with people who have a very different moral code from most of us, and as a result, they do not obey the law, but behave in ways consistent with their moral code: they steal, kill, rape and otherwise harm others for their own gain.

That is not a cite. That is anecdotal evidence. You were making a claim about “people” and the liklihood that they would behave in a certain way in a given set of circumstances. You may have a logical reason for your opinion, but it’s still merely opinion.

Well, now you’ve shown that you understand what a good cite will include. Let me know when you have one.

Again, more difference of opinion. The administration of justice (aka The Justice System) may include punishment, certainly. It is not punishment itself.

And has your theory been proven somewhere? Because it is your theory, not a proven fact.

29

Leaper, thank you for making my point even better than I could have, sarcastic as it may be.

I couldn’t care less about welfare reform except to the extent that it lowers my taxes. In fact the supposed welfare reform that we have only allows liberals to say that it is all fixed, when in fact welfare queens should be blamed for a lot of our societal ills and in fact out of proportion to the amount government money that goes towards them, because they are symbolic of the underlying fundamental problems of the wrong kind of people thinking that they can get something for nothing and rip the public off. In short, welfare is a symbolic problem, and not a real one, and we shouldn’t do more than complain.

Next you move to drugs. I should personally combat the drug war? Get serious! The drug war is not symbolic, like the welfare war, but rather a substitute for criminalizing the conduct of the kind of people who would use drugs anyway, and locking them up. It isn’t the drugs themselves that are the problem to conservatives, and never has been. It has always been the crime that goes with the sort of people who would use drugs or actually use them and actually commit crimes. These people belong incarcerated and their drug usage indicates liklihood of thefts, robberies, crimes, influencing children in this lifestyle, etc. If illicit drugs were not a gateway to these things, we needn’t bother with locking any of them up.

People starving to death all over the world. As a conservative, I don’t see why it is in our interest to do anything about it. It would simply cost us a lot of money.

All three of these examples ignore the fact that people normally think that we don’t care if we don’t do something. I think that is entirely accurate. But complaining alone has a value in maximizing the secondary effects, which are highly beneficial to those vocalizing the most.

But you say that we cannot do something about the justice system by placards and letter writing. You misunderstand me. I don’t want anything done about it. I think that you are wrong, that even simple letter writing campaigns can be very effective, but I want to discourage that. It is a good thing that we have lots of people behind bars who did not commit the crimes that they were convicted of, because those very people are the sort of people who commit crimes, and should be locked up. That leaves the rest of us much safer, and makes us the most freedom loving country in the world. Because who other than people who love their safety and their freedom would have the committment to lock up so many people, including so many technically not guilty people, more than any other country, to ensure freedom?

But to get back directly on the post’s message, it’s a bunch of liberal enlightenment crap to say ten guilty should go free so that one innocent isn’t punished.

Now, let’s follow this idiotic principle a little. Extrapolating from the death penalty data from Illinois, half of the most carefully prepared cases, death penalty cases, result in the conviction and sentencing (to death in those cases) of people who did not commit the crime with which they are charged. There are over 2 million people incarcerated in the United States (I actually have a cite for this one http://www.ucc.org/justice/criminal.htm ) That means that at least one million of those people are innocent of the specific crime for which they are charged, having got there by bad luck, testifying in a way that made them look guilty (or not testifying in a way that made them look guilty), plea bargaining to avoid the at least 50% chance of getting convicted of charges that were much more serious, having bad lawyers, or whatever, the cause doesn’t matter, only that we lock up people who are likely of the criminal element.

Now the original idiotic statement would suggest that we had or have or should let at least 10 million serious felons walk among us as a pennance or guarantee that we err on the side of innocence. That is absurd. If I may generalize without a cite, our prisons are full. If we really expected to let 10 felons go for every innocent one we convict, it would be reasonable for us to at least have cells to hold the guilty should the proof suddenly conform to standard. We don’t. We have just enough cells to hold the half guilty of the exact crimes for which they are serving, and 100 percent over that to hold the people who have committed or will commit other crimes, but who are technically innocent.

I think that the current administration is on to something with respect to the detainees. There are about 150 in Gitmo (http://www.terrorismanswers.com/responses/detainees.html), but remember, that we have another eleven hundred being held in the United States after 9/11 who may or may not be citizen traitors or whatever (http://www.terrorismanswers.com/security/liberties.html). If we can expand this program of holding people without notice to anyone, and try them in military type tribunals and carry out secret sentences, or indefinite secret detentions as we are now doing, we can make an even bigger dent in crime. We simply need to expand the program.

30

A moral center is something that society has taught you. You weren’t born knowing what was right and what was wrong. So you were indoctrinated to follow the law because it was moral. The first part of my statement regarding why people obey the laws stands then. This indoctrination most likely involved punishing you when you went outside the bounds of acceptable behavior.

Unless you are very young, or extremely well behaved, at some point you were spanked or sent to you room. Punished for doing something “against the rules”. Punishment taught you that it was wrong, not the moral center, the moral center would have prevented you from doing it in the first place. So the second part would stand as well.

Even from a Christian standpoint, if you were born with a moral center that told you what was right and what was wrong there would have been no reason for the creation of the Ten Commandments. God wouldn’t need to tell you to do or not to do something that was inborn.

31

I quite agree.

32

Did I ever claim that my moral center was something I was born with? (Checks…) No, I did not. Certainly we are all taught everything we know by the culture we live in. But I was not taught “Don’t steal or kill because you will go to jail!” I was taught that to steal and kill is wrong because it hurts others, and I have no right to hurt others. I was also taught the Golden Rule, although it was not called that. I do not want to hurt others. I do not wish to see others harmed for any reason, much less my gain. I want to love and be loved, like and be liked, get along and be gotten along with. None of which has to do with the law, except that the law codifies these ideals.

In other words, I do not really obey the law. It just so happens that my natural behavior and the law are in agreement most of the time. And when they are not, I generally do what I feel is right for me to do. (smoke pot, for example.)

So your statement does NOT stand. Your statment was:

And you made that statement as part of a larger argument that punishing the guilty was absolutely necessary, even if the innocent get swept along, because if anybody gets away with anything, anarchy will result.

And I think your statement is ridiculous.

The Christianity comparison is interesting, not least because the Ten Commandments are in the Old Testament, making them Jewish law. You are basically making the same argument that many religious people do: that we gotta have rules or we’ll all be sinners! And frankly, I think it’s really sad that so many people have been indoctrinated into that belief.

33

The government is held to a higher standard than individuals. If someone breaks into my home and steals everything I own, I am going to be upset. If the government breaks into my home and steals everything I own, I am going to be furious. I expect to get taken by commoners. Not all individuals are going to treat me fairly. But when the government treats a person unfairly it is a far greater injustice if for no other reason than because the government was given power by the person it took advantage of. The government has a lot of power and we accept that under the assumption that they will use it fairly. To convict an innocent man is unfair. To not convict a guilty man in not unfair to the guilty man. It is only unfair to other guilty people that were convicted under the same circumstances (but since they were guilty they have no right to complain).

In a nutshell, I see far more injustice in the government killing an innocent person than in an average citizen killing an innocent person.

34

This is by its nature a subjective issue, and there’s nothing wrong with championing order and discipline in favor of liberty and freedom. I happen to favor the latter.

But I think you may want to revisit the assumption that being “tougher on crime”, e.g. sentencing and enforcement - even more laws, actually reduces the amount of crime that plagues society. By the time we get around to punishing anybody, the deed(s) has already been done. CJ (with few exceptions) is not a preventative enterprise, just like medicine.

More pills and doctors are as unlikely to increase health as more jails and cops are to increase safety. Social mores are at play here, as noted by other posters in this thread.

For what it’s worth, 10:1 is just an way to capture the philosophy; to make meaningful the magnitude of the injustice when committing an innocent to a capital sentence. It isn’t a judicial guideline, any more than “a bird in hand…” (2:1) is really investment advice, or “a stitch in time…” (9:1) is a governing principle for plant maintenance.

35

I totally agree with you on this. What you’re taught is what is considered good by society. It is the job of your parents to teach you to live within society. When the state hands out punishments for crimes it is taking over where the parents failed and is trying to teach you to live in society. That is the point of the punishments, to teach one to live within the bounds of society.

I’m not really comfortable with the whole sinners thing, I’m not religious and just mentioning religion in my last post made me cringe, so how about we say, criminals instead of sinners? There, now for me the uncomfortable moment is gone. If we didn’t have rules (laws) then no, we wouldn’t be criminals, after all there is no law to break. It is because laws exist that we can have criminals. Laws are artificial constructs created by humans in order to better live together in a functioning society. There is no biological imperative built into humans that would make them obey the society’s constructs. Humans have to be trained to obey the rules to at least some degree. Punishment is a part of that training. You housebreak a dog through a mixture of rewards and punishments, one for good behavior, the other for bad. Training humans is much the same. A person might not need punishment to have good behavior. I was rarely punished as a child because I saw no point in going against my parents’ wishes, the carrot was enough. But some people need the punishment aspect.

All that being said, I think we’ve veered sharply off topic, a nasty habit of mine I’m afraid. My stance on this topic comes from the belief that the group is far more important than the individual and it is my thought that the many would suffer if the one were to be saved. All else being equal, if one must be sacrificed to save many, then so be it.

36

I think this attitude is called the Warrior Eithic, and I couldn’t disagree more. I pity people who live and think that way.

37

Hmm…

Scenario 1:
1 person victimized
Right person convicted
net result: 1 innocent victim, 1 guilty convict. Justice

Scenario 2:
1 person victimized
Right person not convicted
Wrong person NOT convicted either
Future crimes by the guilty: HYPOTHETICAL
Net : 1 innocent victim, no convict. No justice.

Scenario 3:
1 person victimized
Right person not convicted
WRONG person convicted
future crimes by the guilty: HYPOTHETICAL
Net : TWO innocents victimized. AND the original victim lied to by the State telling him/her that they “got the guy”, while leaving him/her hypothetically vulnerable to their true victimizer. INjustice.
Obviously, as with car rollovers and defective toasters, a grim calculation has to be made as to when the relative incidence of each scenario reaches the point of diminishing returns – previously phrased as , is it one in ten, or one in three, or one in a hundred…
As to the statement that those convicted are likely to be “guilty of something” but just maybe not this specific instance… well, the justice system I live with requires the punishment to match the crime. Otherwise as I said, you have lied to the victim (including the greater victim = society) by claiming to have got the guy who did THAT, and have deprived other victims of the satisfaction of knowing justice was done to them
And “the many” do not own my life to sacrifice as they please. If my WRONGFUL execution is necessary to prevent the downfall of society, then I shall go to the chamber cursing the State and the Establishment and calling on those who survive me to work to bring about total ruin for “the many”.

jrd

38

Nicely said, JRD, and I especially appreciate that you seem to have caught what the rest of us missed… the fact that an innocent punished for the crime leaves the real criminal to strike again!

39

Blalron, your OP is ample demonstration of what’s wrong with American society. I don’t mean to pick on you personally, but your opinions are a prime example.

You, as well as too much of American society, have forgotten what it probably the greatest truism ever pronounced:
“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Living in a liberal* democratic society has real costs. Because of our belief in freedoms, [ul]
[li]we don’t quarantine everybody with HIV - and the result is that HIV is spread by sexual and blood contact to others. [/li][li]we allow anyone to become parents - and the result is physically and sexually abused children.[/li][li]we allow people to smoke and drink - and the result is unnecessary deaths, increased medical costs, and domestic violence.[/li][li]and yes, we try to avoid punishing the innocent - and the result is guilty people go free.[/li][/ul]
The list is almost endless. Every single one of our civil liberties and freedoms causes significant harm to individuals and society. Non-liberal societies have the real benefit of considerably reducing the potential for victimization and injury to members of society.

If you think you can have both civil liberties and protection from the harms civil liberties inflict, you are deluding yourself.

Sua

40

ack, forgot the footnote.

  • “liberal” in this context does not mean a left-wing ideology. Instead, it means a democracy in which the rights of individuals are guaranteed, even in the face of a majority wish to abrogate those rights.

Sua