Re:Lawsuit: Sexual harassment ‘victim’ was San Francisco bus...
by michaelt on Wednesday July 26, 2017 @10:20AM
(#14856351)
I still don't understand why some people have so
much trouble with this concept
Having sex with independent third-party witnesses or video recording remains a minority activity. So any attacker with half a brain can ensure it's the victim's word against theirs.
From there it's a simple question of our willingness to let the guilty go free vs. our willingness to see the innocent wrongly punished. This is known as Blackstone's Ratio [1] and it dates to the 1760s.
Needless to say, there's a certain political equilibrium here; if you'll let off 1000 guilty people to avoid 1 wrongful conviction, you'll have a thousand victims and their families campaigning for tougher punishments for every 1 wrongfully convicted person campaigning in the opposite direction.
From there it's a simple question of our willingness to let the guilty go free vs. our willingness to see the innocent wrongly punished. This is known as Blackstone's Ratio [1] and it dates to the 1760s.
Needless to say, there's a certain political equilibrium here; if you'll let off 1000 guilty people to avoid 1 wrongful conviction, you'll have a thousand victims and their families campaigning for tougher punishments for every 1 wrongfully convicted person campaigning in the opposite direction.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation