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This is a matter I should have talked about long ago. Wrongful conviction is absolutely unacceptable, and let me tell you why. Let's say a man is put in prison for 50 years. He didn't do the crime, but he's doing the time. 50 years later, he's released, and JUST THEN, someone confesses to the crime. He spent 50 years in jail for nothing. Half of his life wasted, because no one cared to look over the case once more. This is guaranteed to damage the true victim in many ways. What do I think? I think the investigators should look over the case every 2 years. This has happened before, too. But no one needs it to happen again.

There's still thousands of wrongfully convicted men in America. Many of which will never be released, or have died in prison. Hell, a friend of mine is still in jail for a crime he didn't commit even though there's plenty of evidence that proves that he's innocent. But hey, he fit the description, so he must be guilty. That's how justice works. Rights guys?

By law, jurors must be informed of the prosecution's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the guilt of the accused multiple times. Still… I'd say they could do with it even more. Like, at the opening and closing of proceedings each day and in every statement of both sides.

My condolences to your friend. This is exactly why I said we must double check cases.

I know this isn't directly related to the thread but I think this may be a good time to bring this up.

Plea deals in the United States. If you're not familiar with what a plea deal is, a plea deal is essentially when the prosecution strikes a deal with the defense and tries to make the defendant fess up to the crime for a lighter sentence.

Unfortunately this ends up resulting in people freaking out and just taking the plea deal lest they get convicted for some serious time.

I don't think anything will fully prevent wrongful convictions but the US court system is pretty messed up in some ways.

Since we haven't come up with a good mind-reading device yet, it's not going to be an issue we can fix. Also comes down to standards of evidence. If you/someone else fucks with the scene or post-crime evidence before the police see it, it's no longer admissible in court. That standard is there to protect people from being falsely accused in the first place, but then the jury never even gets to hear of the existence of evidence that may completely prove your innocence.

That's why we have an appeals process.

I don't think you'll ever find a justice system that will have a 100% perfect rate of guilt. As it stands, with the high burden of proof, advanced evidence (DNA, fingerprints, etc.), and layered appetite system, I think it's about as good as we can make it. Yes, there will be screw ups, there will be bribes, there will be people just getting it wrong, but until you remove human error, that's always going to exist.

That's a really rough break, the poor bastard ought to get released and compen$ated.

Probably shouldn't be saying this in a serious debate thread, but fuck it, with your username I can't resist…..

Was getting caught part of his plan?

No chill.

It is a genuinely horrible thing, and we are powerless to prevent it from happening altogether. Human error, crooked cops, or falsely synthesized evidence will cause courts to convict the wrong person; many thousands of people are arrested across the globe due to these errors. We may be able to prevent some cases of wrongful conviction, but it is inevitable.

There's always a solution. No matter how hard the challenge, we've come across. Human error, we can't avoid, but I believe future technology will solve falsely synthesized evidence. Corrupt cops? I'm sure we find and expose them for the scams they are.