If we were talking other crimes I’d go with freeing the 99, but murder? No…even if I knew, for sure, one of the accused wasn’t a murderer, which presumably I wouldn’t know, I’d still say that it’s better to lock up the 99 ones who absolutely murdered someone along with one person who is innocent than letting 99 murderers back out on the street to kill again. I think depriving someone of life is harsher than putting an innocent person in jail for life, and if you freed 99 murderers the odds are good that some innocent 3rd party will die because of that decision. To me, it’s not even a hard decision.
You could change it to every criminal on the planet for one innocent person and I would still choose to let them all go. Knowingly jailing an innocent person is an evil act. The only way I would do it is if the innocent person came to me and said “I’m willing to sacrifice my life for the good of everybody else.”
And you’d take responsibility for the death of an innocent at the hands of one of the 99 you let loose? Yeah, jailing an innocent person is evil…but so is letting 99 murderers loose to kill again, in fact I’d argue that murder is more evil than locking someone up, even if they are innocent. Don’t you think? No snark, honestly puzzled here.
To me, the opposite is not even a hard decision. I’m sorry people might get murdered, but people get murdered regardless. It’s immoral to lock up an innocent person to prevent someone else from potentially being a crime victim.
Want to restore the old Palace Economies, eh? One Bronze Age Collapse wasn’t good enough for you, eh? Want the Greeks to lose yet another written language, eh? Eh?
You Divine Right Socialists make me sick.
I always find this decisionmaking strange. The cleanliness of my own hands isn’t important to me when compared to my role is enabling a bad thing to happen.
Edit: let’s put a different spin on it. It’s you, or your own kid, or the person you love most, in the hot seat. Ahead of time I don’t tell you which it is, but either you’re the innocent person who’s gonna be locked up, or you’re the next target of a murderer who’s gonna be let go. Fifty-fifty chance of either. Which risk would you rather assume?
Any additional murders are on the hands of the murderer, not me. If I jail them and they murder another inmate is that also my fault? So, I can safely eliminate any consideration of what they may or may not do in the future. If I can stop a murderer without committing an evil act, that’s fine, but stopping evil with evil simply won’t end well. Evil comes with a price. I don’t know what the price will be, but at some point there will be a price to pay. I have no evidence for this it is simply my belief system, so don’t expect me to try to sell you on it. 
In my view, releasing a person known to have committed a crime without any punishment or rehabilitation is in an unjust act but not strictly an evil one. A society that knowingly, accidentally is bad enough, imprisons an innocent is to me simply intolerable.
If you change the hypothetical to releasing 99 murderers knowing that they would certainly murder again … well, at that point, I honestly don’t know. You’re asking which evil would you choose and to quote one of my favorite lines from my favorite superhero, Superman, “I wouldn’t let it come to that.” If you really put a gun to my head on this one, I would say that if you’re absolutely certain, not likely or statistically or probably, that the murderers will murder again, the lesser evil is to jail the innocent man but it is a truly heinous thing.
I’m curious how this vote correlates to support for the death penalty. I should start a thread with a poll for people who voted in this poll. (It is polls all the way down, young man!)
But there isn’t a 50/50 chance someone will be murdered by the guy who isn’t locked up.
But sure, it’s easier when it’s some random guy who is going to be killed if we release 99 murderers. But we already know that happens when we set the level of proof at “beyond a reasonable doubt” or any of the other protections we give the accused. If we wanted to lock up more people to protect more people (and ignore the fact that a few more innocents will be swept up too) we know how to do it. The OP is just another test of our commitment to this idea. In reallity of course, 99 murders don’t go free for every one innocent we protect. In practice, 98 of the 99 are probably convicted (if caught) and the one or two innocent (per 100) are convicted too.
You might tell yourself that, but to me it’s not. If I free someone who goes out and murders someone then my actions are what facilitated that murder. I guess that’s the difference between our takes on this question and why for both of us the choice, while different, is easy.
Why no…you will have made a good faith effort to prevent them from the opportunity of murdering someone. Turning them loose, however, would be facilitating them while also providing no justice for the people they murdered in the first place.
FWIW and for a variety of reasons I’m against the death penalty. Not sure how that conforms to your take on my answer but figured I’d let you know.
Conversely, as a society we ask people to make sacrifices all the time. To turn this around, let’s say it was you or BeepKillBeep who were the one innocent person and you are told that you will be set free IF we also set free 99 people who are definitely murderers. Would you jump at the chance for freedom in that case? Me, I wouldn’t. I can honestly say that I’d take one for the team on this, rather than see 99 murderers set free. Because I’d feel responsible for any murders (or rapes or whatever) that those people caused, and also because those people who murdered others deserve and need to be locked up and away from society. To me, as an agnostic, murder is one of the really vile things as you are depriving the person you are murdering of everything, not just their freedom. YMMV of course.
Obviously, both of your opinion are in the majority on this poll, FWIW, and while I don’t agree with your takes I respect it. I just don’t feel that way about this.
I see both sides, to be honest. I’m just not that bent out of shape about the idea of 99 more murderers on the streets. There are already 1000s of murderers at large for a variety of reasons (never caught, did their time, etc.) (in addition to things like bears, sharks, and snakes, which can kill people too). Yes, someone might die at the hands of one of these 99, but they could also be killed by a “new” murderer who never killed anyone before. People die because of many decisions we make as a society. It’s sad when it happens, but it doesn’t mean the decision was wrong.
Yeah, I was gonna ask, “Where’s the Death Penalty Option?”.
Great Username/Post combo, by the way.
I agree that is clearly the main difference. I can understand and respect your point of view, although I disagree. Facilitation, in my mind, needs to be much more proximate to the outcome.
I probably wouldn’t, although I would if the stakes were higher. 99 murderers simply isn’t enough gain to deprive me of my life. First, I feel like I can do a lot more good outside of prison doing what I do; however, I can understand how somebody might feel otherwise. That’s why I added in my previous reply that if the innocent person came to me and said “I want to do this”, I would probably respect their wishes. Second, there’s always going to be more murderers, a lot more. 99 is a mere drop in the ocean. Since I used to be in the army, I don’t think it is cowardice or a lack of principle on my part (not that I think you think this, just a self-assessment on my part). Would I be willing to sacrifice or die for a principle or cause? Sure, but putting 99 murderers behind bars isn’t it.
Yes, they do. the stats are grouped by the type of crime originally committed and the type of crime(s) committed after release. Statistically, the crime of passion murderer just doesn’t reoffend.
Would you feel the same way if you were on a jury, and while you kinda think the guy probably did it, you aren’t convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, so you and the jury vote to acquit.
If he goes on to murder someone, did your actions facilitate that? Is that blood on your hands?
If so, in order to be consistent, it seems that you should always vote guilty in a murder trial, unless you are actually 99% sure that they are innocent.
But, for me, yeah, free them. The current system is a bit of a schrodinger’s guilt. There probably are at least 1-2% of people in prison who are innocent, but we don’t know that for sure. We don’t know that we could pick a group of 100 inmates, and be assured that one or tow of them are innocent, even though that is statistically likely. With the hypothetical, we know for certain that we are sending an innocent man to jail, where not only is he to be deprived of his rights by the state, but the chances of him becoming a victim of violent crime while in jail is much higher than on the outside.
You are asking me to sentence the group as a whole, and I have reasonable doubt that everyone in the group is guilty, so I vote to acquit. (And then go talk to whoever is in charge of this ridiculous criminal justice system).
In those stats that were broken down, I did not see anywhere where it said what the actual rate was for probation/parole violation. It was always lumped in with the rest of the recidivism rates, unless I missed it somewhere.
This number seems useless when the interesting thing is whether they will reoffend with an actual crime, not just violate one of the provisions of their release. Often, the provisions of release are a bit arbitrary, and there is no due process for being reincarcerated, it only require probable cause.
Anyway, point is, I would remove the violations of parole/probation as reasons for considering a release to be a failure in this situation. They will not be under parole or probation, as they will be free citizens. Only actual crimes should be considered in those stats.
I can see that point focusing on just recidivism stats in isolation. But in the bigger (artificial) picture of the ‘what if’, we are said to know who is actually guilty and innocent of the original murders. So why wouldn’t we also know who among those released commits serious crimes, even additional murders, they don’t get caught for? And I’d guess that’s common enough to affect the calculation at a ratio of 99:1 if we had that info.
But by same token I obviously can’t present a ‘cite’ for that, because it would be a function of stuff the justice system doesn’t know. But even if we were among those negligently railroading somebody for a murder they positively did not commit, we probably wouldn’t know for sure we had the wrong guy. From the outside it’s very unlikely we would*. Seems kind of a mismatch to set a real life ‘innocent till proven guilty in court’ standard for future crimes of the 99 released while accepting we’re omniscient as to their original guilt and the one guy’s innocence (including of other crimes he might have actually committed but not been caught).
*note: not the same as believing some blog, news story or documentary about a railroaded person as some people get quasi-religious about; like internet commentary about the documentary ‘Making a Murderer’. It’s clear IMO the cops in that case were amateurish in general and infringed on the marginally mentally disabled guy, Dassey’s, rights in particular. It’s not clear neither of those guys had anything to do with the murder as a lot of people now believe is 100% a fact.
I agree with this. Sentencing all 100 would give a result closer to “correct” than the present system.(*)
Nevertheless, I’d find myself very reluctant.
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- I hope I don’t need a cite. I recall one story (from NewYorker ?) where the guy was obviously innocent. The public defender was given a budget of a few $100’s to hire private detective, but decided that was not enough even to check out the alibi witnesses the defendant had told him about. :smack: ***For a charge of murder. ***:smack: :smack:
I voted for the lock them all up.
As a statistician I can’t help but view “beyond a reasonable doubt” in terms of probabilities, and for my own part put it probably at around 98-99%. So a 99/100 chance of guilt falls within “beyond a reasonable doubt” for me. Also as others have said, I suspect that the percentage of those convicted of homicide who are in fact innocent is greater than 1%, and although I would rather it be lower, I would prefer to leave the system as it is right now than release all those convicted of murder.
I wasn’t convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. You said it right there. So, no…why would I? That’s a bit different than setting free 99 people who I supposedly KNOW are murderers to free one person I know was innocent.
Obviously, this is a totally hypothetical question here. I mean, if I know which prisoner is, for sure, not guilty then I wouldn’t lock them up, just as if we knew which ones were guilty we wouldn’t set them free. But if we are talking about a group of 100 where we know one of them (but not which one) is innocent and know for sure that the rest are guilty? Yeah, I’d lock them all up. If I set them all free then I’d know, for sure, that 99 of those 100 were guilty of murder and likely to commit murder again.
I would just vote that everyone is innocent and end it with that.