

Scores in N.C. are legally 'innocent,' yet still imprisoned - dsr_
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-06-13/innocent-incarcerated-prisoners/55585176/1

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mlinksva
'"We can't be outcome driven," said Anne Tompkins, the U.S. attorney in
Charlotte.'

The quote seems like it may be out of context even in the article, but seems
like a good capture of the problems with total dedication to process over
discretion and justice described (or so I gather, have only read reviews of
yet) in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by William Stuntz.

~~~
_delirium
Unfortunately, once a conviction is final, it's fairly hard for courts to use
any sort of discretion; there are strict limits, made stricter by legislation
in recent years, on what kinds of challenges they can consider. Though as the
article notes, the exact scope of the limits as applied here is unclear, so
they might conceivably be expanded.

On the other hand, executive pardons and commutations have always been
intended as a partial safety valve against too process-focused jurisprudence:
the idea is that a thoughtful executive has the power to say, "this is not the
just outcome" in specific cases, approving exceptions outside of the usual
proceedings of the law. Unfortunately for _that_ theory, though, in the past
few decades pardons and commutations have become a big political risk. If you
pardon someone, you get no major benefit (a handful of bleeding-heart liberals
will like you, but not many), unless the person is really well-connected. But,
you incur a bit potential risk if the person you pardoned ends up committing a
future crime; the "Willie Horton problem". So the safe course of action is to
let ten innocent people rot in jail, rather than risk pardoning a dangerous
person (the exact opposite of the traditional maxim).

~~~
freerobby
To add some perspective here, Justice Scalia went so far as to claim the
government has the right to kill a known-to-be-innocent person so long as they
were at some point found guilty by a habeas court.

Here's the quote:

“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a
convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to
convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent. Quite to the contrary,
we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing
considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence’ is
constitutionally cognizable.”

I personally loved Alan Dershowitz's retort, though it's a lot less relevant
than the words of someone who sits on the Bench:

"Let us be clear precisely what this means. If a defendant were convicted,
after a constitutionally unflawed trial, of murdering his wife, and then came
to the Supreme Court with his very much alive wife at his side, and sought a
new trial based on newly discovered evidence (namely that his wife was alive),
these two justices would tell him, in effect: “Look, your wife may be alive as
a matter of fact, but as a matter of constitutional law, she’s dead, and as
for you, Mr. Innocent Defendant, you’re dead, too, since there is no
constitutional right not to be executed merely because you’re innocent.”"

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/18/scalias-
cat...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/18/scalias-catholic-
betrayal.html)

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amishforkfight
I'd like to see the prosecutors of these cases jailed for the equivalent time
lost by by those wrongfully imprisoned. "Sovereign immunity?" Sorry, I guess
you should do your job then. If you find out later that you did your job so
wrong that someone loses 10 years of their life, you sure as shit better be
the first one in line unlocking their cell.

Public officials have great power, and there needs to be an equally great
responsibility and _consequence_ for abusing that power. And yes, being
ignorant or making the wrong decision counts as abuse of power.

~~~
mahyarm
They can never make mistakes, so either nobody does the job or they become
even worse monsters since the system cannot admit to mistakes, ever.

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tomjen3
Best example I know of to illustrate what happens when you don't have a guy
with the authority to say 'this is insane, stop doing this'.

~~~
raymondh
Governors have that power.

~~~
andrewpi
Actually Governors don't have that power in this situation, since it involves
Federal law.

~~~
kgrin
Then it would be the President.

