Why didn't the anyone call OJ to the stand?

[Riemann]

@Schnitte

I agree with the statement the miscarriages of justice exist, and can never be eliminated 100 %. What I disagree with is the conclusion, namely, that we should simply shruf our shoulders and accept it.

Nobody has stated that as a conclusion, and it is ridiculous to claim so.

@Schnitte

That is not what the post which I dubbed “cynical” did. It did not wonder how the fallibility of human systems might be improved. It purported to make a conscious trade-off. It took the fallibility of justice into account but was willing to accept it for a deal which the post considered worth the cost. That is very different from what you are describing.

As that poster, I will say:
Of course as a first priority we should do absolutely everything we can to improve the overall quality of the criminal justice system. If there are measures that we can take to reduce false positives without any tradeoff, then of course we do that. But this is so breathtakingly obvious that I hardly felt I had to raise it as a matter for debate. Is your approach to debate to assume that everyone you are talking to is pathologically unethical and socially irresponsible unless they explicitly state otherwise?

As Hellestal has laid out so eloquently, the difficult and challenging problem that I was raising is this: However much you work to improve the system, you are still inevitably left with an imperfect system. Since you cannot reduce the number of unjust imrisonments or unjust acquittals to zero, there is a tradeoff. That ratio between false positives and false negatives is calibrated principally by how high you set the burden of proof.

@Schnitte

Honestly? You are saying that you, Hellestal, would be willing to have yourself wrongly imprisoned for life if it guarantees that 100 murderes are taken off the street? Honestly, I find it hard to believe that if the situation really arose, you’d be making that sacrifice. Even if it were true, that doesn’t mean that you have a right to expect others to make the same sacrifice for you.

This response yields as much insight as “I know YOU are but what am I?”

It’s often useful to consider such problems using the principle of the Veil Of Ignorance.

The “veil of ignorance”… is a method of determining the morality of a certain issue (e.g., slavery) based upon the following thought experiment: parties to the original position know nothing about their particular abilities, tastes, and position within the social order of society. When such parties are selecting the principles for distribution of rights, positions, and resources in the society they will live in, the veil of ignorance prevents them from knowing about who they will be in that society. For example, for a proposed society in which 50% of the population is kept in slavery, it follows that on entering the new society there is a 50% likelihood that the participant would be a slave. The idea is that parties subject to the veil of ignorance will make choices based upon moral considerations, since they will not be able to make choices based on self- or class-interest.

Original position

Using this principle in the case at hand, one might ask:

I live in a safe middle class area. My chance of being falsely accused of a crime and imprisoned is far lower than some other members of society. Am I really being fair and objective? As a thought experiment, let me suppose that I have not yet been born, and I will be born to a randomly selected family, perhaps in a high crime area. Now, what probability of false accusation and imprisonment am I willing to accept from the justice system, weighing the fact that reducing this probability will inevitably mean that a larger number of real criminals go free?

[UltraVires]

@Bricker

Ok, I’ll play.

“UV, you testified you were home, alone, during the time of the murder. But isn’t it true that you had good reasons to want Mr. Boddy dead?”

Absolutely not. There is almost never a “good” reason to want a person to die. I didn’t like Mr. Boddy. Actually I hated him, but I wouldn’t wish death on anyone.

@Bricker

“And isn’t it also true that after you discovered your wife in bed in Mr. Boddy, you swore you’d ‘get him back when he least expected it?’”

Yes, it is true. And you have put on evidence to prove it. I don’t deny it. I hated the guy with the heat of a thousand suns, but I don’t kill people. I would have beat him in business or caught him in a lawsuit when he did something wrong. I hate my ex-wife, but I didn’t kill her. Mr. Boddy would never be worth me doing life in prison. I give my respects to his family, but I didn’t cause this.

@Bricker

Assuming those are true characterization of the facts, they certainly permit the jury to draw adverse inferences against you, and are thus fairly characterized as testimony against you.

But they are true, and not themselves illegal.

They permit that influence only if they do not believe me. But I am not being forced to be a witness “against” myself if I get caught up in lies. If I am lying, then I can choose not to testify.

I actually support the current 5th amendment system. Hell, it has worked to my advantage in cases. All I am saying is that the plain text and the history of that amendment, both here and in our mother and sister countries, don’t support such a restrictive reading of it.

[Riemann]

ETA: On rereading the conversation I now notice that Hellestal made another post that I had completely missed, #75. Wherein he already proposed the Veil Of Ignorance, of course! I think I’m superfluous to this debate…

[slash2k]

@UltraVires

They permit that influence only if they do not believe me. But I am not being forced to be a witness “against” myself if I get caught up in lies. If I am lying, then I can choose not to testify.

The jury can believe 99.9% of what you say, and still convict you if they disbelieve the 0.1% of “I didn’t kill him.”

You’ve testified you hated the guy. You testified you swore you’d get him back when he least expected it. You testified you found your wife in bed with him. You testified you are capable of driving from your house to his house. You testified you have no eyewitnesses or proof you were asleep. You testified you have no eyewitnesses that you were even home that day. You testified you own golf clubs like the one used to bash in his head.

And then you demonstrated to the jury that you are evasive, argumentative, and overly dramatic (sobbing in your bed for days over the death of somebody you hated?).

The prosecution would LOVE your testimony: you just showed that you had the means, the motive, and the opportunity, and would likely come across as an unsympathetic figure. If that isn’t testimony against yourself, what is it?

[Ibn_Warraq]

@md2000

Yes, he couldn’t avoid the testimony in the civil suit. He could have plead the fifth, or simply pointed out he was found not guilty, or lied through his teeth (which I assume he did?)

Of course, he also could have admitted the whole thing, since he would have been immune due to double jeopardy rules.

However, the civil trial, of course, revolves around “preponderance of evidence” not “beyond reasonable doubt”. So losing a civil trial does not imply guilty automatically.

He couldn’t “plead the fifth” because he was no longer in jeopardy having been acquitted.

[Pantastic]

@slash2k

Trying to avoid answering the question actually being asked and instead blathering about sobbing in your bed for days makes you look evasive, and to a jury, evasive might well equal guilty.

And to a judge, can look a lot like like prejury or contempt of court, leading to even more legal problems.

@UltraVires

Actually I hated… I hated the guy with the heat of a thousand suns… Mr. Boddy would never be worth me doing life in prison.

So you just testified under oath that you hate the guy with the heat of a thousand suns, and that you wouldn’t do it because of the consequences if you were caught and convicted. From there it wouldn’t take a great orator to paint that as you hated the guy and were only stopped from killing him by the threat of punishment… but clearly if you were confident you could convince a jury that you didn’t do it by an overdramatic display of sadness, you wouldn’t be worried about doing life in prison. Combine that with the generally evasive and argumentative demeanor, and you might have just talked yourself into a conviction.