There are people who believe that convicting the occasional innocent person is inevitable

[xiphias]

In the United States, and probably everywhere else since civilization was invented, there is a constant argument about standards of proof in criminal justice. One of the questions basically boils down to alpha errors versus beta errors -- false positives vs false negatives, or, falsely convicting innocent people, and falsely exonerating guilty people.

Obviously, in ANY system, you want to reduce the number of BOTH kinds of errors, but, in general, when you're setting up a test, the kind of test you do tends to skew one way or another -- you could do manufacturing quality control that lets a few bad things through, but throws out hardly ANY working models, or one that throws out some perfectly fine things, but lets almost NO broken things through. If the things are expensive, and the consequences of failure are low, you might go the first way, and just make sure to have a policy of cheerfully replacing any broken product -- the broken ones you're replacing are ones where they should have been thrown out at the factory anyway, so you're not really out that much money, but throwing out perfectly good ones would cost quite a bit. If the cost of failure is high, though, you'd go the other way -- better to throw out a dozen perfectly good brake pads than have one serious car crash because you let faulty ones through.

Now, there is a school of thought, mostly among conservatives, at least in the United States, that false positives in the criminal justice system are less serious than false negatives -- that is, that it is better to convict innocent people than to free guilty ones. It's not an idea that I agree with -- I think that a justice system needs to be tempered with mercy, and that too high a false conviction rate is a symptom of too little mercy. But I nonetheless appreciate the logic -- if you consider the body politic to be an organism, it's worth killing off some healthy cells in order to make sure that you've killed off the disease. I get that idea.

And, for some people, this idea extends to the death penalty -- having the occasional innocent person executed is a cost that you pay to make sure that you eliminate all the guilty ones.

I don't agree with the logic, obviously, but I understand it. It's a more Draconian view of the world that I'm comfortable with, but, well, it's important to remember that Draco the Lawgiver's system was actually an improvement over what Athens had before.

But, even under that logic -- it's wrong.

See, the idea here is that convicting, and even executing an innocent person is how you make sure that the guilty don't escape.

But convicting an innocent person lets a guilty person free.

That's what I want to point out to, for instance, Rick Perry. If you convict an innocent person, a guilty person goes free. If you let an innocent person be executed, a murderer gets away with murder.

Comments

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

And, for some people, this idea extends to the death penalty -- having the occasional innocent person executed is a cost that you pay to make sure that you eliminate all the guilty ones.

Sorry, how does that mentality even work? (I'm pretty sure we probably agree on this.) The alternative to the death penalty is not letting them go scott free.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Dunno, but one of my most memorable experiences was late one night when the bride, the other bridesmaid, the matron of honor, and I were sitting up chatting in the hotel the night before the wedding.

Somehow child molesters and the Matron of Honor's opinion that the death penalty should apply as they're not rehabilitatable came up. Rather than engage in that conversation, I instead addressed the death penalty in general and chose what I thought was the most milquetoast objection to the death penalty I could come up with -- that it's final and the justice system is not infallible, and look at how Illinois just exonerated a bunch of their death row.

I'd thought that would maybe steer conversation to fallibility of the justice system, or intriguing weirdnesses ni eyewitness testimony* but I was not at all prepared for

You can't take away my right to execute someone just because someone innocent might die.

At that point I gaped for a sec, realized that on this topic Matron of Honor and I shared no common reality space, declared myself tired and went off to bed in the next room.



* my mind's eye filling in a bunch of visuals I know for a fact I've not seen has clinched my feelings about eye witnesses.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, lol, I think at that stage mentioning chemical castration probably isn't worth it. (Not that chemical castration wouldn't be a pretty awful thing to happen to someone who was innocent too.)

If they can't even accept that an innocent individual being murdered by the state is a bad thing, the conversation is pretty much over.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Chemical castration led directly to Alan Turing's suicide.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* Long-term imprisonment can lead to suicide too.

I saw a programme on TV where they were showing examples where the behaviour of sex offenders had apparently changed dramatically for the better because they had been chemically neutered (or at least that was what I thought the treatment was). Far from seeming depressed (and I know that sort of thing isn't always obvious) they were apparently happily contributing to their community and really enjoying life.

I can't speak for the truth of that documentary though. There's often bias. I'm just going by what I've heard. Certainly I was only pointing it out as a possible route for discussion once it's recognised that there are alternatives to "kill 'em all".

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Do you know who Alan Turing was and why he was chemically castrated?

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

The only thing that was coming to mind was the Turing test.

Was he gay? Naturally that wasn't at all what I had in mind (nor what that documentary had in mind) when I said "sex offenders".

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Alan Turing was, in fact, the person who came up with the concept of the Turing test, yes. He was also a mathematician who was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma code and thereby winning WWII.

And, yes, he was gay, and chemically castrated to "control" his "illness." And he committed suicide. The debt that the non-Nazi world owes to the man didn't become public until decades after his death.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

A couple other points:

In many ways, mentioning Alan Turing is something of a red herring -- ANYTHING they did to him short of giving him public medals for saving England, and a wedding to his lover, would have been unfair. The fact that the form of injustice they subjected him to included chemical castration is almost irrelevant to that.

However, micheinnz's comment does point out that chemical castration is NOT without cost, and quite potentially severe cost.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

That would be the point I am making, yes.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

All I was saying was that, in the case of sex offenders (involved in non-consensual sexual assault i.e. rape), there are alternatives to state-sponsored murder.

I wasn't even remotely justifying what happened to Turing.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Yes, he was gay. He was tried and convicted for it, and given the choice of chemical castration or prison. He chose chemical castration so he could continue his work. It made him suicidally depressed, and then he killed himself. It was a fucking tragedy and an incalculable loss to humanity.

You may not have meant gay when you said "sex offenders". Some people do. Because of cases like Alan Turing's I have a large a gut "NO!" reaction to chemical castration as I do to the death penalty.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

You may not have meant gay when you said "sex offenders". Some people do.

They're called dickheads. And that's me being relatively polite on this matter.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't presume that I'm a homophobe. When I said "sex offender" I thought I could take it for granted that I didn't have consensual sexual partners in mind.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I wasn't presuming anything about you, and I apologise for the impression that I was.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Apology accepted.

Sorry if I appeared to be overreacting.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's why I want to get THIS point out there. Yes, the Matron of Honor's world is a much scarier place than mine is.

But do you think she would have been convinced by, "If you execute a person who's INNOCENT of being a child molester, it means that there's a GUILTY one out there who got away with it"?

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I was going from thinking that death penalty for child molestation was way the hell out there, but rather than have that discussion i'd just pick an unassailable reason to be squeamish about death penalty in general.

I don't really think there is an analogy there with child molesting. I really doubt there's ever any situation where Guy A gets picked up for something Guy B did* as opposed to Guy A gets convicted for something that didn't happen in general or really shouldn't be classed as that level of molestation or is or isn't likely to be recidivist.

Not sure if I'm making sense. Just I think innocence if it's molestation ONLY (not involving someone dead) isn't likely to imply someone else did it unless you're talking infants, at which point you've likely got something more than verbal evidence or the case wouldn't have been made.


*(mommy mommy i forget who touched me?)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You're not dealing with rational arguments here. You're dealing with emotional ones. To argue against an emotional position, you need to understand the emotion that is driving it, and to provide a counterargument that either triggers a more powerful emotion, or triggers the same emotion even more powerfully.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Hm.
Thing is, “look, killing an innocent person means you’ve let the real killer go free” re the death penalty in general kinda invites “ok, so if we later find the real killer we’ll kill him, too.”

I see it as a compelling argument for keeping DNA evidence and allowing new evidence to be submitted and such, but I don’t see it as likely to sway anybody from supporting the death penalty.

And if you bring it up in a situation where it’s just not a likely outcome it won’t be given thought.

So re MH in that specific conversation, I don’t see it as having had any effect re her feelings about molesters, but perhaps some effect on continued appeal, though, honestly, perhaps only post mortem.

[clarification: Clarification: whether or not you want to make sure you don’t miss any guilty parties doesn’t fully overlap with whether or not you care about killing people who are innocent. DOES have bearing on the Perry thing as TX is blocking further investigation re the fire. ]

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Again, we're not entirely dealing with a logic-based argument. What you're saying is logically true, but not emotionally compelling.

And, in practical terms, if you've found a guy and convicted him, well, case closed. If it turns out that the guy is innocent, then you can re-open the case.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I'm a little unclear about what you and I are disagreeing about.

I /think/ what I'm disagreeing with you on is whether it's an argument against the death penalty that every innocent person executed means that probably someone else who did commit the crime goes free.

I don't see that as any different from someone rotting in jail for a decade.

If you're talking about denying appeals and destroying evidence after conviction I might be with you, but again, no different from someone being jailed.

In fact, there are more appeals allowed on death row than if someone's got life in prison; one could argue that one is /more/ likely to later ifnd the real killer if the innoccent man is on death row.

And if someone considers a few innocents in the death toll to be acceptable collateral damage then that person would likely be perfectly fine with finding out later that someone now dead wasn't the killer, so long as the real killer is later found.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

What we're disagreeing about isn't whether my argument makes sense -- it's whether someone like Matron of Honor would be persuaded by it.

Your point is that my argument doesn't, logically, negate her argument. And that's true. My point is that my argument DOES, emotionally negate her argument. You're a person who tends to like to base your opinions on, y'know, facts 'n shit like that, so the observation that my argument doesn't actually address any of Matron of Honor's actual points, well, that jumps right out at you.

But odds are that Matron of Honor doesn't KNOW what her points are: her argument is [FEAR] [BAD PERSON] [DESTROY BAD] [EXTERMINATE] [not so bad person, destroy? not so bad] [DESTROY BAD].

So, MY argument comes down to [NOT SO BAD PERSON+DESTROY == BAD PERSON ALIVE CAN HURT ME FEAR FEAR FEAR FEAR]

Emotional arguments are hard to put together for logical people. Because they don't make sense. If they made sense, they'd be logical arguments.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

> "ok, so if we later find the real killer we’ll kill him, too."

But the problem with convicting and executing the wrong person (aside from the collateral damage aspect) is that having found someone to pin the murder on, the system quits looking for anyone else. So unless the real murderer steps up and confesses, we don't get a chance to kill the right person.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Or, as has come to light in this Texas case, the real killer remains free to kill more people. True, therewas willful suppression of exonerating evidence from the get-go, and it wasn't death penalty, but it does highlight that there is harm to far more than the convicted.

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/28/150996459/free-after-25-years-a-tale-of-murder-and-injustice

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I really doubt there's ever any situation where Guy A gets picked up for something Guy B did*

You'd think so, wouldn't you? And if you're talking about multiple assaults by a close family member, probably not.* But it's been documented several times with assault by strangers--even with adult victims.

Anyone who's pro-death-penalty should be forced to sit in the front row of an Intro Psych class while they talk about reconstructive memory, repeatedly, until they get the point.

*Although there's always the possibility of, "But dear Uncle Albert couldn't possibly have done that! Tell me who *really* hurt you." Ask often enough...

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

good points.

in her defense, i think what she had in mind was more an "i can change i won't do it again' person rather than 'no i didn't do that' person.

re reconstructive memory, scroll down in the above link to the part where i talk about the very clear visuals i have of things i never saw.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

> You can't take away my right to execute someone just because someone innocent might die.

*blink* Oh my. I'm suddenly tired too.

SDT

[happyfunpaul.livejournal.com]

I agree, but the situation is even worse than that. The Rick Perrys of the world think that convictions of any type, including false convictions, are Just Fine-- they don't even see that there's a tradeoff to be made.

In signal detection theory, there's a distinction made between "bias" (which is what you're talking about, "which way to skew") and "sensitivity" (also called "discriminability"), which is, at heart, how good the "test" (here, the justice system) is at distinguishing between "signal" and "noise" in the first place.

In theory, everyone, no matter what their bias, should be in favor of improvements to the justice system that provide better discriminability (assuming they're not too expensive, etc.). After all, discriminability improvements lessen both false negatives and false positives (or, at least, decrease one while leaving the other unchanged). And yet, in reality, many "tough on crime" types oppose such improvements.

For example, DNA testing is a scientific advance that provides a wonderful increase in discriminability, in those cases where physical evidence exists. Use of DNA testing should be pretty much automatic, not only in new cases but to reopen old ones. There's essentially no way you're going to let an already-convicted, actual guilty person go free in these cases, but you might free some innocents. However, many judges have ruled against DNA testing, even though the defense is willing to pay the expense themselves. Even worse, in many (most?) jurisdictions, as a matter of routine, physical evidence destroyed after a trial is concluded.

There are a few "good guy" prosecutors like Craig Watkins of Dallas County, who have actively sought to improve the discriminability of the justice system. However, the vast majority of prosecutors seem to feel that "more convictions = good" and that false positives (convicting innocents) are Just Fine-- i.e., it's not merely that they want to "skew" the bias such that little weight is given to false convictions, it's that they give no weight at ALL to them. They don't even see that there's a tradeoff to be made.

(Every year, for the "Methods" unit test in my psychology class, I ask a variant of the same signal detection question. :-) Maybe one of my students will someday be a better prosecutor.)

Re: SDT

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

In case you're wondering, I spotted you here and then added your LJ.

Very encouraging to hear about prosecutors like Craig Watkins.

[redbird]

It's also worth stating explicitly that there is a difference between "humans are fallible, and we are accepting that if we have any convictions there is a risk that they will include innocent people" and "I don't care that there's proof that this person is innocent, he's already been convicted."

ETA: It may not be unconstitutional to execute an innocent person after due process, but it's still wrong.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

And the latter, if I recall, was one of the hallmarks we saw in TX.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Actually, I am able to understand even THAT position. In Dungeons and Dragons terms, that's the Lawful Evil position, and compatible with Lawful Neutral.

If you believe that the rule of law is a good and a goal in itself, then you would see a value in following through with a lawfully-mandated execution, because, well, that's what the law says. The person's guilt or innocence is a LEGAL state, not a state having to do with what actually happened before the trial. If the person was duly convicted of a crime, then, if you believe that the Law is the absolute end, then you do what the Law says. The Law doesn't say, "Execute people who committed capital crimes," it says "execute people who were CONVICTED of capital crimes." If the person was wrongfully convicted, he or she was nonetheless convicted.

If the Law is the end in itself, that position makes sense. If law is being used as an imperfect proxy for justice, that position doesn't hold together.

But "law and order" candidates stand for, as they say, Law, not Justice, and certainly not justice tempered with mercy, which is what I would prefer.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

See, the problem is, you're thinking that Perry might actually care whether or not his position makes sense, and that he'd be willing to listen long enough and with enough attention to understand your argument.

This is a governor of Texas. A Republican governor of Texas. A Republican governor of Texas about whom some other Texan Republicans of my acquaintance have said something along the lines of "That guy's frighteningly crazy, even for one of our governors."

To give him what credit I can, Perry's not done anything his predecessors haven't done. Executing innocent people is not a new thing in Texas. You got convicted of something and sentenced to death? The State has jumped through all the hoops that the US Supreme Court makes it jump through? You're dead. It's all been done legally. No problem. Not interested in discussing it or considering other opinions.

Before anyone jumps on me for saying unpleasant things about Texas, let me just explain that I grew up there, and still have close family living there. I have life-long exposure of the way things are done there, and that's the basis of my opinions. Also the reason I no longer live there. Ymmv.

[badmagic.livejournal.com]

When the word got out that Rick Perry might have ordered the execution of an innocent man, his popularity went up. It wasn't that folks thought the guy had done it; they'd heard the news. Perry's ratings went up because they respected his moral stance. Justice, to them, was ensuring that for every crime, there was a punishment. Asking "Wait, have we got the right guy?" only increased the interval between crime & punishment. Get too worried about whether you had found the guilty party and you might not punish anyone at all! To these folks, that would have been unjust.

You're making the very reasonable assumption that people want to punish the guilty. 'Taint so. If someone's been hurt, the first instinct is to lash out. The question "Am I lashing out at the right person?" is often of secondary importance. For the MoH in Vval's story, it hadn't even reached that priority.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

No, I'm making the assumption that they're TERRIFIED that someone might go UN-punished.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I disagree with that assumption. Vengence, not fear.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Still, even if they're cool with punishing the wrong person, I assume that they still want to make DARNED sure that the right person is ALSO punished.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

And what I keep telling you is that your argument helps not a whit with the death penalty nor wrongful convictions.

If you were arguing with the people who want to limit appeals and destroy evidence after conviction, I'm with you.

If you think that "well,if we convict an innocent and condemn him to death we haven't gotten the guilty" will sway people from supporting the death penalty I'm saying that no, anybody who's previously been okay with killing innocent people so as not to let guilty people go free will amend their position only so much as to allow that maybe it's worth being as sure as possible, but when push comes to shove, kill person A and if he later turns out to not have been the guilty, go find the guilty person and kill nhim too.

For people who consider wrongful convictions to be an acceptable collateral damage, it'll remain an acceptable collateral damage.

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

I'm including this post in a future f-list tour.