4 ms·
In the worlds of William Blackstone "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstones_formulation
by timmyd 16y ago
In the worlds of William Blackstone
"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstones_formulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstones_formulation
- nazgulnarsil 16y agowhat about 11?
- pjscott 16y agoThe general form -- and I forget who first said this -- is "Better that n guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. Solve for n."
- AndyKelley 16y agoThis isn't a joke guys. It's an insightful comment to which pjscott responded appropriately.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Bud 16y agoThis link doesn't load unless you include the apostrophe in "Blackstone's", but HN seemingly does not allow posting of URLs which include an apostrophe (well, a single-quote, that is). Bug?
- philbo 16y agohttps://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Blackstone%27...
- extension 16y agoIt's such an obvious principle yet so few appreciate it. Assuming the punishment is about as bad as the crime, then punishing the innocent is as bad as committing the crime. So, what's worse: allowing a crime to go unpunished or committing an equally bad crime yourself? Additionally, a crime committed by the very institution that is supposed to enforce justice is worse than one committed by an autonomous citizen, all other things equal.
- Confusion 16y agoIt's so obvious it's vacuous. In order to be able to get many criminals behind bars, you will have to accept innocent casualties. The only way to be sure that no innocent folks are sent to prison is by not convicting anyone. The cost of that solution is obvious and unacceptable. Any principle that ignores the trade-off that must necessarily be accepted is vacuous.
- extension 16y agoWhere did anyone say that no innocent people must be sent to prison? I said that punishing the innocent is worse than not punishing the guilty. But you show that strawman who's boss.
- waqf 16y agoYou didn't say that, but Blackstone's original formulation suggested it, if you interpret "ten" as representing an arbitrary number.
- extension 16y ago1/10 is actually a pretty low standard for wrongful convictions so I don't see why we would interpret what Blackstone said, or even Ben Franklin's 1/100, as hyperbole. They clearly meant that exhonerating the innocent is much more important than convicting the guilty and there is no good reason we can't adhere to that principle in practice.
- Confusion 16y agoThere is actually a very good reason: given that it is unlikely that we will miraculously find a way to change the ratio of wrong to right verdicts, you can only lower the amount of people wrongfully convicted by lowering the number of convictions. As most convicted people are actually guilty, that means that most of the newly unconvicted people are, in fact, guilty. Assume that currently 1 person is wrongly convicted for every 10 guilty ones that go free and try. Do the math to change that to 1 in a 100 and be affraid of the consequences of putting this principle into practice. And again, note that you are not talking about changing the ratio of wrongful convictions to right convictions, because that is highly unlikely: you are talking about changing the absolute amount of wrongful convictions by allowing a larger amount of wrongful exonerations. Because of the ratio of the amount of people involved, the amount of guilty people that would need to go free is staggering. You need thorough Bayesian reasoning to understand this one.