I agree with your last sentence, but I think it's a bit out of place here. The OP didn't call for a disproportionate sentence. Prosecutor Ken Anderson deliberate falsified a case that cost Mr Morton 25 years of his life. A 25 year sentence for Ken Anderson would seem perfectly reasonable to me.
The OP is calling for a disproportionate sentence. 25 years is more than many murderers get.
It seems reasonable to you because you are in fact judging this case emotionally, not reasonably. Your empathy towards the victim causes you to want revenge, believing it to be justice.
People in power over the rest of us should be held to higher standards. That should be the trade-off. As it stands, it is not the case, and there are few consequences for actions like these. That should change.
Oh, and by gunning for Mr Morton, the actual murderer went free, and killed someone else.
> Oh, and by gunning for Mr Morton, the actual murderer went free, and killed someone else.
This is something that should be told again and again and again to the juries in murder trials.
I think it's just as much a scandal that the jury convicted Morton without substantial evidence as that the prosecutor withheld potentially exonerating evidence.
> "you are in fact judging this case emotionally, not reasonably."
That's a pretty bold assumption. And it happens to be wrong in this case.
I'm not focused on the 25 years, but rather on the equivalence between the sentences. If a law were to be proposed, that the sentence for prosecutorial misconduct be comparable to the sentences so wrongfully achieved, it would have my vote regardless of the emotional context.
So basically an eye for an eye all over again. Never mind the consequences, like incentivizing prosecutors to avoid long sentences at all cost to reduce their personal risk.
I'm very much against "eye for an eye" as a general principle, but in this particular case -- in the inner workings of our judicial system -- I think it has utility.
> "Never mind the consequences, like incentivizing prosecutors to avoid long sentences..."
That is indeed part of the point! If we can agree that sentencing has spiraled out of control in this country (and I suspect we can), then perhaps a strong disincentive for misbehavior within the system would be beneficial?
Since when is it about revenge rather than education when you put people in jail? Do you really believe 10/15/20/25 years in this case would make a difference? It sounds like you're going for the eye for an eye solution here.
> "Do you really believe 10/15/20/25 years in this case would make a difference?"
And do you think 10 days in prison is going to make a difference?
To answer your question, yes, I believe serious consequences for prosecutorial misconduct will make a difference. Making the sentence for malicious prosecution comparable to the sentence suffered by the victim is simply a guideline that I personally would find reasonable.
EDIT: I should have said "I would find reasonable in this particular case, i.e., that of prosecutorial misconduct". I agree that talionic justice (eye-for-an-eye) leads to gross dysfunctional if put to general use. But I'm not convinced that makes it inappropriate in all cases.
No, but I really don't think anything over 10 years really can influence the person's behaviour. It's a 20->30, or 30->40 years jump - not only you took a lot of their life and broke most of their outside connections, but also the natural character change takes place. Holding someone for 20+ years would make them both useless to the society afterwards and unlikely to be able to live on their own.
I'll look later to see if anyone analysed this in real cases, but my intuition is that there's some limit where it doesn't make a difference anymore whether you add more years - only guarantees that the jailed person has no way to go back to any kind of reasonable life afterwards.
