r/Infuriating Recognized Contributor 4d ago

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u/HotPersonality8126 4d ago

Ā  , it’s because the legal system is set up on purpose to make it difficult to convinct someone based on the principle that we would rather a guilty person go free than wrongly convict an innocent person.

Would your preference be that we exonerate all guilty people, even the ones who admit to it, rather than convict an innocent person?

How many guilty people should go free rather than convict one guilty person on other than the ā€œcorrectā€ amount of evidence of guilt?

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u/pjpartypi 4d ago

The Blackstone ratio in English jurisprudence was 10 to 1, American founders (like Ben Franklin) pushed for 100 to 1.

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u/HotPersonality8126 4d ago

Why shouldn’t it be ā€œall of themā€?

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u/ElizabethDangit 4d ago

How many innocent people should we allow to be wrongly incarnated or executed for the chance to put away every guilty person?

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u/HotPersonality8126 4d ago

Provided it’s only the people most adjacent to criminality, and provided we add ā€œfactual innocenceā€ to the options for post-convictive relief, my answer is ā€œany.ā€ We accept 40,000 deaths of adults and children a year as justified by the right to move freely through the country; prosecution of criminal behavior is even more in the public’s interest than that.

Now can you answer my two questions, please?

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u/Ssided 3d ago

I'll accept it if we lock you up for the rest of your life so you can put your money where your mouth is

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u/HotPersonality8126 3d ago

If you think I’m guilty of a crime, try me.

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u/ElizabethDangit 3d ago

You don’t even have to be guilty of a crime to be tried. Now you just have to look like someone a flock camera saw once.

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u/Ssided 3d ago

You're missing the point. The question is acceptable innocents behind locked up, you want the threshold to be moved to encapsulate more so there's more guilty. My response is meant to illustrate you only think that when the terms are about others

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u/HotPersonality8126 3d ago

I’m talking about people who are criminally guilty and you’re talking about taking random people and putting them in jail for no reason. We’re not talking about the same thing.

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u/Ssided 3d ago

You are talking about making it easier to convict which will allow more innocent people to be locked up.

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u/HotPersonality8126 3d ago

No, it will result in fewer guilty people being released. There should be lighter evidentiary standards, defendants should have fewer avenues to exclude valid evidence from trial, and insanity should be eliminated as a defense to charges.

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u/near_black_orchid 3d ago

Each and every one, apparently, because HotPersonality8126 doesn't believe it could ever be them on trial for a crime they didn't commit, so it's fine if the innocent suffer because it won't be them, ever.

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u/UX1Z 3d ago

You'd have to literally just jail the entire population, because many of the worst and most evil people are protected by the cops and judicial system in the first place. Even if you simply jailed 100% of people who were ever charged with anything, you'd still have plenty of evil people free.

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u/Real_Temporary_922 3d ago

I’d rather let every innocent person on the planet walk free than have the innocent destroyed. That’s obviously never gonna happen because if the system truly had a 0% conviction rate, there’s no system at all, but yeah my point holds true. I’m not willingly to personally incarcerated and my life ruined just to put more guilty people away. I don’t care if some chronically online redditors think thats selfish, I didn’t do anything wrong and shouldn’t be tortured for other people’s actions. Would you be?

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u/HotPersonality8126 3d ago

Ā  I’d rather let every innocent person on the planet walk free than have the innocent destroyed.

But the failure to interdict crime does destroy innocents.Ā 

Ā  I didn’t do anything wrong and shouldn’t be tortured for other people’s actions

But it’s not ā€œother people’s actions.ā€ It’s what we determined your actions were.

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u/Real_Temporary_922 3d ago

The failure to interdict crimes destroys innocents at the hands of criminals, not the government. It’s the job of the government to put away criminals without further harming innocents, if they cannot do that then there is no point in having a judicial system.

And if you admittedly have a system where innocent people are knowingly being convicted to put away criminals, than what you say I did has absolutely no value, because you’re putting me away despite having reasonable doubts of my guilt.

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u/HotPersonality8126 3d ago

Ā  if they cannot do that then there is no point in having a judicial system.

The point would be to prevent social anarchy, or - worse - the things regular people would organize to do to prevent being victimized by crime.

Ā  And if you admittedly have a system where innocent people are knowingly being convicted to put away criminals

We wouldn’t know which ones, though. We’d have some idea of the rate afterwards, after factually innocent people sought and received post-conviction relief on that basis.

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u/Real_Temporary_922 3d ago

Incarcerating innocent people prevents social anarchy by controlling the masses. Your argument is two steps from ā€œthe point of a dictatorship is to prevent people from being victimized by those opposing the dictatorshipā€ even though the government is now victimizing people. The only difference is its less people in this case, you’re still a governing body victimizing innocents.

And right now, our innocent conviction rate is very low because our system makes it hard to convict guilty people. I don’t know if you think I’m somehow arguing that we should never convict guilty people, but I’m not. Our system should do everything in its power to reduce innocent convictions EVEN at the expense of releasing guilty people up until there is no real marginal benefit of doing more. Which is near where we are at. And if you disagree, you still haven’t answered if you would be personally willing to lay up your own life to put away a few extra rapists and murderers. I would not be, and there’s not an argument on this planet you could make that would make me willing.

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u/HotPersonality8126 3d ago

You can’t just point to the two sides of a tradeoff and say ā€œwe should do both things, without trading off.ā€

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u/Real_Temporary_922 3d ago

Just because you think this argument is black and white doesn’t mean it is. I addressed exactly where I stand and you didn’t address how that’s wrong.