Stuart Taylor Jr on an issue that ought to matter to more people than it does. It's the astounding number of people who get convicted in our courts, tossed in prison — sometimes for long stretches, sometimes even on Death Row — and are later proven innocent. Since a lot of these people look like they could have done it — i.e., they're poor and/or minorities and/or have records of proven crimes — much of the public isn't much bothered. It's like, "What's the big deal we threw the wrong Hispanic guy in the slammer?" A few years ago at a party, a guy I sorta knew caused jaws to drop when the topic drifted around to someone who'd just been freed from prison after 10+ years served for a crime he didn't commit. The partygoer said, and he didn't seem to be kidding, "They shouldn't have let him go. All those guys are guilty of something."
The thing I think some people really don't get is that if someone is wrongly convicted, the guy who really did it gets away scot free. That's really the Perfect Crime: You did it but you didn't get caught…and since someone else did, no one's looking for you. In fact, if evidence did come out that you'd dunnit, the authorities would probably try to not reopen the case because that would be embarrassed, if not sued.
There are many things we could argue about with regard to our judicial system. I just don't know why so little attention is paid to what seems to me like the single most inarguable point, which is that if you're going to convict people of crimes, you ought to convict the people who actually committed the crimes.