"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer". Agree?

[Nye Bevan]

This is Ben Franklin's formulation of "Blackstone's Ratio". Bearing in mind that the escaping guilty persons might be named Zimmerman, Simpson, or Wilson, do you agree with this principle? (And please also bear in mind that relaxing the requirement to prove guilt beyond any reasonable doubt is probably more likely to harm those who cannot afford hotshot lawyers).

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	Yes. I agree that "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer".
	8 (80%)
	No, I disagree with this principle.
	2 (20%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. Yes. And that goes for innocents called "collateral damage".

[sarisataka]

2. Will you volunteer

to be the one innocent person to serve life in prison so we can keep those 100 we "know" are guilty, bearing in mind that the "guilty" persons might be named Smith, Jones or Muhammed?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. You have to consider the converse, as well

Will you volunteer to be one of the people murdered because someone guilty was not convicted? Not punishing probably-guilty people is *not* a risk-free choice; innocent people will suffer as a consequence of your choice *whichever* side you err on, not just if you err on the side of overconvicting.

There are also the two other mirror-image considerations - "how bad do you feel about innocent people being imprisoned to keep you (and your fellow citizens) safe?" and "how bad do you feel about forcing people who have been raped/robbed/had their loved ones murdered etc to watch their wrongers get away with it scott free (or having that happen to yourself)?"

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. No, I think that ratio is probably too high.

It's worth noting that, in practice, 1 in 100 is probably a lot more than "reasonable doubt" gets interpreted as - I'd be amazed if as few as 1 prisoner in 100 were wrongfully convicted.

The question to ask yourself, I think, is at what point do "the increased risk to me and my fellow law-abiding citizens from more criminals getting away with it and hence those contemplating crime in the future being less effectively deterred, plus the moral hazard of failing to give justice to victims of crime" and "the increased risk to me and my fellow law-abiding citizens of being wrongfully convicted and punished, plus the moral hazard of imprisoning innocent people" balance out?

I have no idea what that answer is, but I think that 1 in 100 is probably too high - perhaps 1 in 30 or 1 in 50 is the point at which doubt should be classed as "unreasonable" (I guess that the de facto interpretation by juries at present is probably more like 1 in 10, on averge, with wild variation, but that's just a guess based on a half-remembered conversation with someone who'd read a study that suggested that about 1 person in 10 in gaol was innocent, so about as tenuous as it gets)

[Motown_Johnny]

5. Also,

It is better to have a government which allows some corrupt individuals than individuals who allow a corrupt government.

[NaturalHigh]

6. I agree wholeheartedly with the principle.