I think a judge making a mistake this egregious should not be allowed to continue being a judge.
This isn't a solution. It is a wish. Obviously, we all would like it to be the case that innocent people are never punished. But first, is the rate of false convictions of the innocent actually egregiously high? This article gives an example of one case, but it does not follow that we are facing high rates of false convictions, especially for serious crimes that carry serious penalties. Second, is there a way to reduce false convictions, especially in a way that doesn't comprise the system in some serious way?
> I think a judge making a mistake this egregious should not be allowed to continue being a judge.
Perhaps, perhaps not. You risk incentivizing behavior among judges that subverts the justice system.
4% may sound low to some, but when people's live are on the line that's terribly high. If a plane had a 4% failure rate it would be considered a colossal failure.
Also, judges can be malicious too.
And while all jobs include at least some element of dealing with people trying to deceive you, if I'm an embedded engineer dealing with a vendor overstating the low-temperature performance of their embedded compute module, the stakes are a lot lower.
I'd rather have a system that occasionally let someone go free because of insufficient proof than occasionally have people be imprisoned when they are actually innocent.
What do you think the dash cams are for?
Trivially, if you have no criminal justice system, no innocent person would go to prison; it's as foolish as claiming there would be no poverty if there were no human beings. But crime would increase. The bulwark against those who do not live according to moral principles, who do not respect the law, would be removed, as such people respond only to the fear of punishment.
And the law and the justice system are also instructive. Part of their purpose is to teach. You will not teach justice without being just, and that entails punishment. The severity of the punishment is proportionate to the severity of the crime precisely because it signals and communicates to the perp that severity. It is feedback, hence instructive. A just person already accepts such punishment as just.
It is far better to focus on reform, but in order to do that, you first have to have a good understanding of what the law is all about. And I admit: our criminal justice system does need improvement and reform.
And therefore, for proper function of society:
- Judges should be exposed to penal jail sentences if an innocent goes to jail,
- Judges should also be exposed to penal jail sentences in case they release a criminal sooner than the maximum sentence and they commit a new crime.
When a criminal is released 18 times by judges, and they slaughter a dozen people on the 19th time, you know you’re in France. And that’s somewhere you don’t want to be.
As far as being penalised for not predicting the future actions of an individual person, not so much. That would effectively mean that every person would be sentenced and required to serve the maximum penalty for any violation, even though those maximums were intended to be doled out to only the most egregious offenders.
Perhaps much more granular and specific sentencing guidelines with objective qualifiers so that sentencing was more predictable?
You have to be careful here. Doing so can create perverse incentives that undermine justice. If a judge or a jury face such penalties, they will be inclined to reduce the penalty or feel compelled to find the defendant not guilty as a fearful precaution, even in cut and dry cases. And would you punish innocent jurors where unanimity is not required?
That's a desirable effect. Your argument is the very reason the 5th amendment exists. Making it easier to find someone guilty is a BAD thing, not a good thing.
And the hyper-cautious effect isn’t because of fear of getting it wrong. It’s fear of retaliation whether right or wrong.
All legitimate government power is supposed to come from the people, I feel like that's often forgotten, especially when it comes to the least accountable branch of government.
There's always room to improve the system, but the way to do that is to make it resilient to individual failures, not by placing more pressure on the individual not to make mistakes.