Horizon

I think mistaken convictions and (more often) semi-coerced guilty pleas are relatively common in urban criminal courts here in the U.S. because criminal cases are handled in great numbers at great speed and neither prosecutors nor public defenders nor police have sufficient time to learn the full facts of any given matter. I've heard many stories of people who insisted they had not committed the crime charged and genuinely wanted to take the matter to trial, and yet were pressured by their public defenders to take plea-bargain deals that would require guilty pleas. On the flip side, the urban courts' careless haste also lets a certain number of manifestly guilty people go free.

Probably the care given to sorting out the facts increases with the seriousness of the offense, but it increases much more reliably with the income levels of the persons involved.

Probably the modern phenomenon of pressure to accept unfair plea-bargains during the pretrial process would not have existed in 1946 Britain. At present, my guess is that defense attorneys are most likely to advise their clients to make the expensive, time-consuming, and exceptional choice of a full jury trial if they do believe there is a strong reasonable doubt as to whether the defendant committed the crime.

"Innocent," however, is not the word. Nobody is innocent. The only question we can ever hope to resolve in a free society is whether an accused party is guilty of a charged crime.

"Innocent," however, is not the word. Nobody is innocent. The only question we can ever hope to resolve in a free society is whether an accused party is guilty of a charged crime.

... or is innocent of it. Personally I don't see the problem in employing the I-word; the distinction of noun and adjective - between being an innocent and being innocent of a specific act - is surely clear and useful.

Fine as long as the distinction's maintained, but many people don't bother.

Ms. Bridegam's distinction is an important one. In the only criminal jury I've ever sat on, a man was charged with drunken driving. Two men were in an automobile. Both were intoxicated. When the car hit a telephone pole, both bodies were tossed around in the automobile so that it was difficult to show who was driving at the time of the accident. Between the accident and the trial, one of the men died from his injuries. The other man admitted to having driven the car after becoming intoxicated, but claimed that he was not driving it at the time of the accident.
One of the reasons lawyers don't like to empanel academics is that we tend to hang juries. My fellow jurors were inclined to find the accused innocent because they believed that the state had not proved that the man was driving at the time of the accident. I argued that the man had confessed to drunk driving -- so the issue was whether the charge was of drunk driving in general or drunk driving at the time of the accident. Finally, deciding that the state expects a jury to reach a verdict based on the common sense wisdom of ordinary people, I relented to the judgment of my peers and the accused man was found innocent in spite of his admission.

Not "find the accused innocent"; "find the accused not guilty." Really, the use of the word "innocent" is always confusing here. As Mr. Luker notes, the man was clearly guilty of *something* -- but not necessarily the offense charged.

Thanks for the correction! How could I have gotten it wrong in my own illustration of the point? Because the word "innocent" is _always_ confusing.

Alan A wrote:

'hang-'em-and-flog-'em rant'

Ooh! A tabloid cliche! (Hehe: liberal tabloid cliches are always just *above* the pale though aren't they?...) From you! Show me where I've indulged in your 'hang-'em-flog-'em' rant.'

The use of the word "innocent" is always confusing

"Of persons: Doing no evil; free from moral wrong, sin, or guilt (in general); pure, unpolluted. Usually (in mod. use always) implying ‘unacquainted with evil’"

versus

"Free from specific wrong or guilt; that has not committed the particular offence charged or in question; not deserving of the punishment or suffering inflicted."

Still doesn't seem like any more a problem to me than that of other words with multiple meanings, but perhaps the issue's more complex in the atmosphere on the jury room.

The distinguished octogenarian Professor Bernard Schwartz, one-time Roosevelt antitrust regulator and lifelong constitutional scholar, began our criminal law class at Hastings with, "Welcome, criminals, to Criminal Law." He proceeded quickly to the observation that everyone has committed some offense at some time, and it is a question of policy which offenses are detected, apprehended, tried, and punished. Obviously not all offenses are of equal gravity, but laws, if read to the letter, are strict, and human beings are imperfect.