Better that 10 guilty go free...
A NYT article (Study Fuels Growing Debate About Lineups, April 19, 2006) has this lovely quote:
Now, I know it's a rhetorical point, I know Prof. Malpass is not just inventing a strawman to demolish it. But his followup, "I'm fine with that when we're dealing with juvenile shoplifters," Dr. Malpass said. "I'm not fine with that for terrorists. We haven't figured out the risk there." rubs me the wrong way.
We aren't so much in the business of setting free the guilty, although we do that as necessary to prevent the state from convicting without evidence, or without respecting individual rights, or by otherwise cheating. What we also are not supposed to be in the business of, is convicting the innocent, which is the focus of the article.
Eyewitness identification, like much of human perception, cognition, and reporting, can be wildly flawed. Given how strongly most people still weigh eyewitness identification, despite its often unacceptably high levels of unreliability, we should be moving - swiftly! - to do something about it.
Eyewitnesses can break a case wide open. They can provide what no-one else can: firsthand reporting of what happened. They can identify, remember, pick out the guilty. We hope.
In fact, many cases could not be prosecuted at all without eyewitnesses, just as many cases can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt despite the lack of any such "direct" evidence (circumstantial will do just fine; DNA evidence is circumstantial, but when properly used, can nail a suspect's presence at the crime scene as almost nothing else will).
Nevertheless, I get deeply troubled when people make noises that sound like "It's not so bad if the innocent get caught up." Because that's what the terrorism reference, above, sounds like. The good Prof. doesn't want to let dangerous terrorists escape the net of justice. But is that really a serious problem? Is it a matter of hindering the government's ability to identify, track, detain, deport, or target for elimination dangerous terrorists? Or is it really about whether or not we make it a little less easy for the utterly innocent to be convicted based on a false-but-honest misidentification?
update: Norm posts his interesting comments on the same article.
Those some people, of course, include William Blackstone, one of the closest things American law has to a patron saint.
"There are people who'd say it's better to let 10 guilty persons free to protect against one innocent person being wrongfully convicted," said Roy S. Malpass, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso
Now, I know it's a rhetorical point, I know Prof. Malpass is not just inventing a strawman to demolish it. But his followup, "I'm fine with that when we're dealing with juvenile shoplifters," Dr. Malpass said. "I'm not fine with that for terrorists. We haven't figured out the risk there." rubs me the wrong way.
We aren't so much in the business of setting free the guilty, although we do that as necessary to prevent the state from convicting without evidence, or without respecting individual rights, or by otherwise cheating. What we also are not supposed to be in the business of, is convicting the innocent, which is the focus of the article.
Eyewitness identification, like much of human perception, cognition, and reporting, can be wildly flawed. Given how strongly most people still weigh eyewitness identification, despite its often unacceptably high levels of unreliability, we should be moving - swiftly! - to do something about it.
Eyewitnesses can break a case wide open. They can provide what no-one else can: firsthand reporting of what happened. They can identify, remember, pick out the guilty. We hope.
In fact, many cases could not be prosecuted at all without eyewitnesses, just as many cases can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt despite the lack of any such "direct" evidence (circumstantial will do just fine; DNA evidence is circumstantial, but when properly used, can nail a suspect's presence at the crime scene as almost nothing else will).
Nevertheless, I get deeply troubled when people make noises that sound like "It's not so bad if the innocent get caught up." Because that's what the terrorism reference, above, sounds like. The good Prof. doesn't want to let dangerous terrorists escape the net of justice. But is that really a serious problem? Is it a matter of hindering the government's ability to identify, track, detain, deport, or target for elimination dangerous terrorists? Or is it really about whether or not we make it a little less easy for the utterly innocent to be convicted based on a false-but-honest misidentification?
update: Norm posts his interesting comments on the same article.
Posted by Eh Nonymous on
Wednesday April 19, 2006 at 4:12pm
*Not all comments welcome. Flippant, facetious, fierce, or fatuous, fine. Fraudulent, felonious, fabricated, facially insufficient, and farkin' futile, fuggeddaboutit.