Why presumption of innocence is so important
US juries get verdict wrong in one of six cases: study
And this is in the most mature democracy in the world.
The method this statistician used to do this study is both fascinating and clearly logically sound: he looked at disagreement between judges and juries. As he pointed out, if they disagree, one of them is wrong. And they agreed only 77% of the time, meaning that times when they disagree demonstrate a propensity for one of them to get it wrong.
And, of course, the direction we err, in reality, is just the opposite that our jurisprudence and decency indicate that we should err: we tend to convict the innocent.
Sad. And worse is how every conversation I have about law enforcement and criminal justice issues seems to persistently reinforce peoples' self-righteous notions that more people need to be put behind bars.
As it turns out, perhaps the problem with criminal justice is that not enough people trust it because we have not made our criminal justice system trustworthy enough, as citizens on juries and professional citizens involved with criminal justice (or civil justice, for that matter).
Hubris, the Greeks whisper to us. Hubris. That we have more answers than we really do.
Love,
Ben
1 comment:
It's about time that people know about the corrupt evil system.
This study is a good first step. I was falsely arrested and convicted and there are a lot of innocent people in jail. There are no research and stuff into things like this. The police and DA's office are incompetent evil people that lies and falsify reports to cover up their mistakes. They do everything in their power to put innocent people behind jail. Otherwise, god forbid, they would have made mistakes, they might even have been wrong. Better that someone go to jail than anyone of them of the "system" gets the blame.
Police and people from the DA's office have personally told me that "they ARE the LAW and they can do whatever the hell they want." The police even tell me that are writing that they personally witnessed me committing a crime I didn't do. All I did was said I wanted a lawyer and then they frame me and wrote that I resisted arrest, was on drugs and assaulted a police officer. They are evil evil people. Police and judges lie all the time.
Juries do not know how corrupt the police and the judges can be and how most things they are told are lies. It is not the jurors' fault.
And this was in San Francisco. It gets worse else where. I used to think that the system was better, before my arrest, but now I'm disillusioned with the system.
The solution is anti corruption.
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