Do You Agree With This Statement?

Depends on who the guilty men are. If one of them is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, there is an excellent chance he'll murder thousands of innocent men.

 

It sounds all sweet and rosy but the fact is we have the best system in the world and in trusting it there will also be mistakes..It's almost like war, we know there will be innocence killed, but we still must fight at times.
Many people here believe everything should be perfect and fair, it's how we were brought up, however that's just not the real world.

There are consequences to everything, and some are severe. However we do try our best, and it's all we can do.
Should there be no fighting for the oppressed because innocence may be killed?

Same thing....

 

I agree, it's how you wind up with chaos...Our Police have guns, would you rather they did not working in N.Y.???,,,HELL NO!!! However are innocent people killed???,,yes they are..

It's just part of the price of a safer Country...

We go into the Cosmos,,,right?, what has that cost?, Should we not go?

 

Have you stopped to consider what Lincoln's contribution to the civilized world might have been had he not suspended habeas corpus for certain people during the Civil War?

 

Do you know how many families of an accused and executed claims that they were falsely convicted and killed?

My refutation stands. I would invite anyone to try and take issue with what I wrote?

 

my apologies , I made a mistake I was reading one thread and thinking of another. Sorry for sending the thread into an off topic conversation

 

Won't play your game. This is a classic false choice. Try again.

Why should we accept either?

 

Apology accepted.

 

I didn't vote.

The question is sort of loaded, and makes a false assumption.

 

That's a very good point, nobody in Prison is guilty...

 

Yeah,,,and I want world Peace.....



I won!, [I bet it was my speech about saving the stupid murderers...*]

 

I'll be honest. I have mixed emotions about that statement. Which is probably what has kept me from getting picked for jury duty every time they read that statement during jury selection.

While I don't think it's right for an innocent person to be punished for something they didn't do, I also don't think it's right for 10 guilty people to go free just to ensure that. That's a horribly lopsided ratio. And it potentially denies way too many innocent victims their well deserved justice.

If the phrase were simply, "It is better to let a guilty man go free than punish an innocent man," I might be able to support that.

 

Explain your point, if you have any. And explain this:

"It is better not to play then risk a chance of losing and looking like an idiot''

Agree?

"It is better to let a rapist rape your child then try to help him and risk losing your life''

Agree?

"It is better to take the back roads and drive real slow then to get on a highway and risk an accident''

Agree?

 

The reality is that most people plea bargain after confessing to the cops.

If you don't confess, they'll probably let you go for lack of evidence.

The vast majority of people in prison are there because they confessed.

 

I agree.....

 

Close to 2.5 million people are in prison/jail in the US. This would mean, technically, you are asking me for my opinion on the option, that 1/10....250,000 innocent people is justifiable. optioned with 25 million criminals not being imprisoned for their crimes.

Ten for every one. A high estimate of innocent imprisonment, might be 3%, which would be like 75,000 of 2,500,000...or 2% 50,000 of 2,500,000 or 1% 25,000 of 2,500,000. Much more probable is less than 1%, IMO. Capital crimes even less. Capital crimes, with priors even less still.

Your question only leads to the inevitable false hope of perfection, 1 of 10...1 of 1000...1 of 2?

You cannot be frozen to administer justice through law. Striving for gains in society is of course good. Ruining society in nonsensical pursuit of unobtainable perfection is destructive.

I voted no.

 

What if your punishment was the death penalty? Would you accept death?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby

Unless the claim is that someone else committed perjury and made false statements to federal investigators then I believe Scooter Libby was convicted for acts that he committed. He wasn't convicted for "outing" Valerie Plame but instead for lying about what he knew about it to federal investigators.

By the same token we know that former President Clinton also committed perjury and obstruction of justice but in the hearing by the US Senate the Democrats refused to convict him and remove him from office based upon the evidence. It was the worst case of a political agenda taking precedence over the facts in a criminal act that I've seen in my lifetime. The House had impeached Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice establishing that they were high crimes and misdomeanors that warranted removal from office and the Democrats of the Senate, violating their sworn oath to reach a decision based upon the evidence, refused to judge the evidence that supported the impeachment and conviction. A great miscarriage of justice at the highest level of our government.

 

...and there it is, just as I predicted.



Take on my refutation of your statement, Makedde. No one who disagrees with me on my stance has quoted my response to attempt a rebuttal.

 

No, certainly not.

 

I'm curious to know what your stance is. Could you tell me where your response is?

 

Read the thread.

 

A subsequent post made me refer back to this initial opinion which is worthy of discussion:

While we can address the asserations that by no means establishes them as facts. We must sort the facts from the opinion.

This is not nor should it be the sole criteria. Fundamentally for a person to later "prove their innocence" they have to prove that someone else committed the crime. This can be exemplified by the cases where DNA evidence has exhonerated over 140 individuals sitting on death row. They had to prove that the DNA collected at the crime scene was not theirs but instead belonged to someone else. DNA evidence is not present at all crime scenes so innocence cannot be established for those that did not commit the crime where the evidence doesn't exist implicating another person.

Simply stated the "error rate" is far greater than the number of individuals who can later establish that someone else committed the crime for which they were convicted.

Yes, we live with the reality that injustices do take place and the original OP acknowledges that. The OP establishes that the error rate needs to be less than 1:10 in establishing that it is better for 10 guilty people to go free as opposed to convicting 1 person. It did not propose that all guilty people should go free to avoid the incarceration of one innocent person so the critiera has been established for the "margin of error" that is being referred to in the OP.

Let us go back to a quotation in Item 2: "The main assertion I want to make in this thread is that life has risk."

Life has risk and we all risk being a victim of crime on a daily basis. We can take measures to reduce that risk but a risk factor always exists. As noted in Item 3 a large percentage of crime is committed by repeat offenders and it is repeat offenders that are rightfully considered to be the primary threat to society. It is also the repeat offender that is most likely to be caught and successfully prosecuted. Of course a prior violation of the law does not imply a current violation of the law and each case must be addressed on it's own merits.

All juries in capital punishment cases are prejudicial related to the death penality. This is established during the jury selection process where any potential jurior that opposes the death penalty is automatically removed from the jury. There is no such thing as an impartial jury making a decision in a capital punishment case.

What is also being ignored is coercion of either witnesses or the accused in many criminal prosecutions. A couple of cases come to mind.

Tommy Chong (of Cheech & Chong fame) was entraped by federal agents for selling a bong to a town where local laws prohibited it. He wanted to fight the charges but the prosecutor threatened to file charges against his wife if he fought the charges. Instead of risking even the remote possibility of his wife being convicted he plead guilty and went to prison. That's flat out wrong.

We also have the case of Troy Davis who was just executed. He was convicted based exclusively on eye-witness testimony. Since then 7 of the 9 eye-witnesses have come forward stating that coercion was used to obtain their testimony against Troy Davis and he was not the person that committed the murder. One other witness was the secondary suspect in the case. If we removed 8 of the 9 eye-witnesses for the prosecution and if seven of them had testified at the trial that Troy Davis was not the person responsible would he have been convicted and executed? I seriously doubt it.

 

Yes. That is why we have "smart" bombs. And anyone who cares, and you have taught them that "vengeance is mine" is a joke, can always take care of the guilty who go free and they get to be presumed innocent too.

Is it better for ten guilty men to go free so they can imprison more than one innocent man?

Is it worth letting a guilty go free for the sake of letting the innocent man rot in prison?

Letting the innocent rot to keep from killing the ten bad guys and their supporters is why we have tyrants all over the earth with countless thousands more innocent men rotting in prison or killed.

Bartering for the lives of the innocent so that the innocent are not consumed with the guilty is different than a justice system that lets ten guilty men go free so they can imprison a lot more than ten innocent men. Lot was not in prison, but from the story we know that when the guilty Sodomites moved forward to take the innocent they were struck blind and justice served.

The whole purpose of punishing the guilty is to avoid innocent people having a motive for taking the law into their own hands. The whole purpose of "Vengeance is Mine" is so the innocent accept the guilty going free.

 

I couldn't find a rebuttal, just questions about the case, which point to a utilitarian assessment of all factors.