On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 08:46:54AM -0800, Gautam Mukunda wrote: > We normally say (I believe quoting Thomas Jefferson) that it's better > to let 10 guilty men go free than keep one innocent man in jail. The > problem in this situation is that, given the scale of the threat > involved, _that's not true in this situation_. Another way to look > at that is, would you let 100 guilty men free before putting one > innocent man in jail? 1000? 10,000? At some point you have to put > a limit. We have a criminal justice system, after all. It is a > numerical certainty that there are some number of innocent men in jail > in American prisons right now.
The obvious difference is that normally WE DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE GUILT OR INNOCENCE BY GIVING THE ACCUSED A FAIR TRIAL. Yes, the trial could result in an erroneous verdict, but we did the best we could, and that is usually pretty darn good. We owe no less to the people that we took out of A FOREIGN COUNTRY THAT WE INDVADED and who we now hold incommunicado, without access to a lawyer and without a chance at a speedy and fair trial. That you fail to see the difference between the two situations after all that thinking that you claim to have done is quite extraordinary. > The only way to ensure that is not the case is to release every single > one of them. Anyone want to do that? No? Then we need to think, not > emote. No, the way to ensure that, as best we can, is to give them a fair trial, not violate their rights and treat them as sub-human by holding them for years in inhumane circumstances like some fascist dictatorship might do. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
