That is an excellent piece.

AK,

You are confused. There is no evidence for some of the things you assert and no connexion between the things you put together to create an effect. Or, more shortly, citations needed.

I am not convinced because I just see someone who is buying in to the mythology created by a criminal justice system which knows it is broken but prefers self-justification and heretical religious ranting to the more important task – repair.

Repair would, after all, require a bit of (christian?) humility and clearly that is too much to ask, especially in Georgia, especially in a recession!

– It probably doesn’t matter that much in the American criminal “justice” system, because by the time anybody’s served more than a year or so of their sentence (if that), they’re somebody else. Whoever they were before is gone, and what’s left is usually a monster we really don’t want infesting our society. Especially if they were innocent: that would probably make them into worse monsters, because any notion of justice they started with will have been demonstrated false. (And if they’ve survived as good people, it’s probably because of a very strong religious faith.)

– The chance of a false conviction for a crime is one of the risks a person takes in life, just as the chance of getting hit by a car. It’s usually a good thing for society, especially the government, to take steps to minimize such risks.

– It’s human nature to look for a scapegoat, and most people stop thinking about guilt vs. innocence once the scapegoat has been chosen. My own experience talking to random people (coworkers, etc.) is that they usually go through the “convict the scapegoat” process about the time the scapegoat is charged with the crime. After that, efforts to achieve a just evaluation of the facts are considered “gaming the system”. I’ve found that the more heinous the crime, the more people are opposed to any thought that the charged scapegoat may be innocent, because “it was such a horrible crime”. One hypothesis is that there is a genuine psychic pain associated with having a heinous crime without a named scapegoat.

WRT the hikers in Iran, I was pretty sure they were spies, and still am. If not, the rule above applies: the risk of getting grabbed and falsely accused of a crime is part of the normal risk they run. Which, if I understand that part of the world, was pretty darned high otherwise. Especially near a contested border. Hard for me to find much sympathy.

The one that struck me the strongest was the story of Steven Truscott, who was tried and convicted, at age 14, as an adult for the murder of his classmate. From the beginning, there were serious questions about his guilt, and many people felt he was railroaded primarily because someone had to pay and he had been the last person seen with her. He had originally been sentenced to death, but that commuted to life imprisonment (he was released on parole in 1969). It took until 2007 before he was finally exonerated.

There are constantly examples of people having their convictions over turned either by additional evidence being found, or through errors or deliberate actions by police, prosecutors, or expert witnesses. In Canada,these people have the possibility of redress, even if it takes many years. With the death penalty, no redress is possible.

The simple question is “How many innocent are you willing to kill?”. Of course, if everyone executed is guilty, that is a moot question.