You miss the point all together. If a person is innocent than society has an obligation to correct that mistake, period. To do otherwise would be barbaric and unconscionable. And as for whether I have a close family member who may be be in prison, IT'S NONE OF YOUR DAMN BUSINESS!!!!!!!! But to even suggest that the ONLY reason that someone would have this concern is because of some personal family situation is pathetic at best. It implies that you don't really care what happens to anyone but yourself. They have a name for people who behave in this manner. And when I said that society needed to err on the side of the potential innocent, it did NOT mean that I think we should just let everyone go free. Hardly. What it means that we must make the phrase 'guilty beyond a reasonable doubt' mean what it says. We have a justice system based on the assumption that ANY and ALL persons are innocent UNTIL the state can demonstrate 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that the person is guilty. It does NOT require that defendant PROVE 'beyond a reasonable doubt' that he is innocent. In fact, a defendant is not required to do anything. The entire burden of proof lies with the state. That is the system that we have in this country. Now is it flawed in how it's sometime applied? Of course it is, which means that as a society looking for justice and NOT revenge, as that has absolutely NO PLACE IN THE LAW, we must make sure that justice is served. And it is NOT served when the innocent are convicted of crimes they did NOT commit since this also means that the actual guilty party was allowed to go free, so how's THAT square with your idea that we must never forget about the victim?
Or perhaps you're like the French General Mireau in Humphrey Cobb's book set in WWI 'Paths of Glory', where he ordered 3 innocent men court martialed for cowardice so as to set an example for others who might have actually committed acts of cowardice but his attitude was that he couldn't shoot everyone in the army or they couldn't continue the war, so it was better to shoot just a few, even though he knew that they had been simply chosen as random and were probably totally innocent. However, in his mind that was not as important as getting the message across to those who actually might be cowards. Where was the concern for the innocent there? How is your attitude any different?
| 
