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

[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.