This poll is an off-shoot of this Great Debate.
If you were wrongly convicted of a crime and sentenced to 20 years in a state prison, would you lie and say that you committed the crime if that were a condition of parole?
I’d like to think I would never admit guilt if I was, in fact, innocent and particularly for a crime heinous enough to merit a 20 year sentence.
That said I cannot imagine wanting to hang in jail for 20 years and my pragmatic side might do whatever is necessary to get me out soonest.
Tough call really and I just do not know but lean towards maintaining my innocence so chalk me up as sitting on the fence.
I would confess to the Lincoln assassination if that’s what it took to get out of the slammer. I can’t see pride being enough reason to endure the horrors of prison life.
I think it’s dependant on how much time I’ll actually be serving, since it seems many people don’t serve out full sentances anyway. 20 years, out in 5 then no way, bite me. 20 years down total? Let me out, I don’t care what I have to say about myself.
What if you were accused of child molestation or perhaps worse molesting your own children? (JUST an extreme hypothetical…I think that is clear enough but for that it pays to be crystal clear I am not implying anything of the sort about you)
I would confess to just about anything to get out of jail. Child molestation would give me pause, because of the lifelong stigma and difficulties arising from such a crime – but yeah, I’d confess to it.
What difference does it make really? Once you are convicted, in the eyes of the law, society, and the parole board, you’re guilty. Likewise, admitting remorse for the crime, knowing that it is the likeliest way to achieve parole regardless of whether you really committed the crime, no more implies guilt than the original conviction did. People lie for many reasons, some of them are quite understandable.
If you serve your whole time, you still get the lifelong stigma.
This is just one of those situations that I don’t think you can pre-guess.
It’s nice to think that an innocent man would steadfastly refuse to falsely confess, but…
Excellent question. I’d still confess to it. Better to live life as an outcast than be in prison. I’d probably assume a fake ID and start anew somewhere else.
And then be for real guilty of trying to avoid Megan’s Law and sexual offender notification. Do you think that asserting your innocence to the initial crime would be valid defense to your later guilt?
Please clarify the OP – does this mean I have already been convicted, and have been assured that if I am appropriately remorseful to the parole board, they will let me out of prison?
If that is the case, then I would be the most remorseful inmate on the planet. All the stigma of whatever crime it was has already been attached to me.
However, if I am offered this as a plea bargain, as an alternative to a trial wher I faced a 20 year sentence if convicted, I don’t think I would take it.
The OP has it that you have already been convicted of a crime you did not commit. To get parole part of the remorse you must show is an affirmative statement that you did, in fact, commit the crime (regardless of how much you proclaimed your innocence in the past).
In the linked thread it was being discussed how cruddy the plea bargain system is (encouraging you to cop to a crime rather than go to trial regardless if you did it or not).
Depends on whether or not I came to enjoy the buttsechs.
Sure. Freedom trumps embarrassing the DA.
And being out lets you hunt for the “real killer”
Perhaps this would deserve a thread of its own because I am kind of shocked at the nearly unanimous decisions shown in this thread.
Is self interest the sole arbiter of what you should or should not do? Am I the only person here who gets a distinctly queasy feeling contemplating having to cop to a crime you did not commit? It may well be that society and the legal system view me as guilty no matter what I say about it. But if I know I am innocent I find it nearly an impossibly bitter pill to swallow to go ahead and say I did whatever merely to achieve an early release.
I wish I were a philosopher to better explain my unease with this. Perhaps I am making something of nothing but I cannot shake the feeling there is something fundamentally wrong with admitting to a crime you did not commit.
Am I making any sense?
I’m more worried about other things I’d have to swallow, or gag on, in prison. And they would be much bigger than pills.
Actually, I understand what your saying, which is why I said earlier that I wouldn’t accept this as a plea bargain instead of a trial. But once your convicted, the damage is done. You are trying to save a reputation (yours) that is already ruined.
Who says it’s all about self-interest? Perhaps if you were out of prison you could go back to being a productive member of society, care for your family, lead a good life. What purpose does an innocent man serve in prison?
If you want to talk about self-interest, acting out of your own morality of truth-telling in this case strikes me as more self-interested than telling the parole board what they want to hear.
ETA: And how is spending 20 years in prison if you are actually innocent of the crime for which you were convicted any less fundamentally wrong than expressing remorse for the very crime.
I think I’d be relatively content in prison, so I probably wouldn’t make a false statement just to be paroled.
I’m a lousy liar, anyway. They’d know I wasn’t telling the truth–not that it would matter, I guess.
Further clarification.
The crime is child molestation.
I honestly say I don’t know what I would do. This is a crime I couldn’t imagine admitting to, but I could imagine myself even committing such a crime even less.
Either way, your life will never be the same because convicted and paroled child molestors aren’t treated the same as someone convicted of any other crime. Paroled killers, to my knowledge, don’t have to register with law enforcement every time they move. You would never know if your neighbor was a convicted killer, but you’d get a notice in the mail if he was a pedophile, to be sure.