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There are people who believe that convicting the occasional innocent person is inevitable
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.
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.
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ETA: It may not be unconstitutional to execute an innocent person after due process, but it's still wrong.
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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.