This is correct. I know the tendency on the left lately (and especially on Lemmy) is that the ends always justify the means, but the rule of law is more important. Rights of the accused are crucial to maintaining democracy. If the state fucks up its case or breaks the rules, they need to be held to account even if it means pieces of shit sometimes get away with things. Reference the entire Miranda case the warnings are based on, for example.
I also believe karma is a bitch. OJ got off but he was held civilly liable and he went on to commit other crimes that eventually landed him in prison for a significant chunk of his life. (To that point, karma eventually caught up with Miranda also…)
Yeah. Lots of people parrot the phrase “better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man suffer,” but then as soon as some specific guilty person goes free they go “no, wait, let me amend that…”
It does annoy me that the guilty men going free does tend to skew strongly towards rich guilty men, simply because they can afford to fight it out. But I’d rather everyone get the chance to fight it out rather than remove those opportunities. Maybe if everyone had the opportunity to fight for all their rights the police and prosecutors would start taking more care not to violate them.
This is correct. I know the tendency on the left lately (and especially on Lemmy) is that the ends always justify the means, but the rule of law is more important. Rights of the accused are crucial to maintaining democracy. If the state fucks up its case or breaks the rules, they need to be held to account even if it means pieces of shit sometimes get away with things. Reference the entire Miranda case the warnings are based on, for example.
I also believe karma is a bitch. OJ got off but he was held civilly liable and he went on to commit other crimes that eventually landed him in prison for a significant chunk of his life. (To that point, karma eventually caught up with Miranda also…)
Yeah. Lots of people parrot the phrase “better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man suffer,” but then as soon as some specific guilty person goes free they go “no, wait, let me amend that…”
It does annoy me that the guilty men going free does tend to skew strongly towards rich guilty men, simply because they can afford to fight it out. But I’d rather everyone get the chance to fight it out rather than remove those opportunities. Maybe if everyone had the opportunity to fight for all their rights the police and prosecutors would start taking more care not to violate them.