People v. State

Suppose you’re a juror in the trial of a defendant accused of being a serial child rapist/murderer. After all the evidence is presented you’re 95% certain — but only 95% certain — that the defendant is guilty as charged. You might be understandably reluctant to vote to acquit based on a 5% chance that the defendant is innocent. If the defendant is guilty — and it’s 95% certain that he is — voting to acquit would mean he’d be free to rape and murder other children. But a 5% doubt is certainly substantial, when you’re talking about the freedom of a man who just might be innocent (as would be a 1% doubt, or a .01% doubt).

I think that most juries who are 95% sure that a defendant accused of being a serial child rapist / murderer is guilty are going to decide that they are persuaded “beyond a reasonable doubt” of the defendant’s guilt and are going to convict. And maybe, in the interests of public safety and of all the potential future victims of the defendant, it’s right that they do so. If the defendant was in fact innocent, his conviction and imprisonment is a catastrophic tragedy, but so is being killed in a traffic accident.

But why risk compounding the tragedy of an innocent man’s conviction by trying to make a possibly innocent man’s life hell based on the assumption that he’s in fact guilty? Why not treat convicts as if they’re both innocent and dangerous? Why not limit the government to only necessary evil?

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