Jesus. No, man. That is not the right way to think. The consequences of finding an innocent person guilty are not just bad for that person, they are bad for the entire justice system, and the society that it serves.
I get that you are partly saying that to get off jury duty, but I just don’t want to let that slide. The courts are a vital barrier against corrupt cops, sure, but even upstanding honest cops could easily see someone as guilty because of their own unconscious biases or just the bad luck of circumstance making someone look guilty. It happens all the time.
My friend’s dad, now a retired judge, was the second lawyer who defended Lindy Chamberlain, and actually got her released from the bullshit charge of murder.
She was the famous case in Australia where her baby got eaten by a dingo. The cops thought she’d killed her baby, because she was “cold and unemotional” while being questioned. So they just did not look at the evidence properly, her first defence team sucked, and she got found guilty, even though there was tons of evidence that a dingo had indeed just come and grabbed her baby from her tent and dragged it off.
If the cops look at you and get a feeling you are guilty, they will act on that feeling. You need a court, with a process, to try and detach all that human gut instinct away from the actual facts, to find the truth of the matter.
Jesus. No, man. That is not the right way to think. The consequences of finding an innocent person guilty are not just bad for that person, they are bad for the entire justice system, and the society that it serves.
I get that you are partly saying that to get off jury duty, but I just don’t want to let that slide. The courts are a vital barrier against corrupt cops, sure, but even upstanding honest cops could easily see someone as guilty because of their own unconscious biases or just the bad luck of circumstance making someone look guilty. It happens all the time.
My friend’s dad, now a retired judge, was the second lawyer who defended Lindy Chamberlain, and actually got her released from the bullshit charge of murder.
She was the famous case in Australia where her baby got eaten by a dingo. The cops thought she’d killed her baby, because she was “cold and unemotional” while being questioned. So they just did not look at the evidence properly, her first defence team sucked, and she got found guilty, even though there was tons of evidence that a dingo had indeed just come and grabbed her baby from her tent and dragged it off.
If the cops look at you and get a feeling you are guilty, they will act on that feeling. You need a court, with a process, to try and detach all that human gut instinct away from the actual facts, to find the truth of the matter.