A Question of Morals

Our justice system can be an enduring, tedious process. With a recent discussion on Canadian security certificates, a thought had come to mind.

What would be worse...

An innocent man being sent to prison, for a crime that he did not commit.

Or

A guilty man being set free, for a crime that he did commit.

In today's society, what would you prefer?

For the sake of discussion here, let's pretend the crime is irrelevant. The individuals history is unknown. Just a straight forward question, which of the two would you prefer.

The thought of an innocent man being detained for years, without being offered a trial, it is enough to keep me up at night. However, those that have this blood on their hands, can probably sleep because they would rather see a guilty man be sent away, at the expense of an innocent man serving time.

Personally, I can not accept that.

If I had to choose, I would set a guilty man free, rather than imprison an innocent man.

What would you do?

[edit on 21-10-2007 by chissler]

No doubt about it....

Regardless of how many guilty go free, no innocents should be allowed to suffer...

It is a horrible fact that MANY guilty go unpunished, far more go free than every get caught...

It is a much more horrible fact that SOME innocents are put in jail and punished for crimes they never commit... FAR MORE TERRIBLE..

No system is perfect and never will be, but we must always strive for perfection in this one area and ever be vigilant against injustice...

Semper

Well this where a none of the above answer would come in handy.
But for the sake of the discussion I would say that it is far worse to send an innocent person to prison because people guilty of crimes are set free after they have served there sentences . Well that's how I view the 2nd option anyway.

Well, the US Constitution pretty much comes down on the side of setting the guilty free in the absence of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt and also with the prohibition of double jeopardy.

There is no doubt that innocent men go to jail and some even to death and as sad as that is, even when the system protects the rights of even the guilty, as our system does, certain miscarriages of justice are going to be attributable to corruption and, one would hope, more often because of human error.

As has been noted before, there is no such thing as justice in the natural world.

Justice is a human concept and while it may be flawed in practice, it's all we have and when it fails, we have only ourselves to blame.

[edit on 2007/10/21 by GradyPhilpott]

I would rather a guilty man go free than an innocent be jailed.

If we go the other way - which increasingly, we are - then the very concept of "crime" becomes subjective, and punishment becomes based on whim rather than law. The system breaks down when we begin to see people as "potentially guilty" rather than "innocent"