That's not entirely true. You can be found factually innocent, and still be unable to escape prison—due to the utterly Kafkaesque nature of the legal system.

Here's a case I read about over a decade ago, and never forgot:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2012-aug-21-la-me-in... ("Man behind bars 2 years after judge orders release" (2012))

- "But two years after he was supposed to be released, Larsen remains behind bars while the California attorney general appeals the decision. The state’s main argument: He did not file his legal paperwork seeking release on time."

The next paragraph deserves to be quoted also:

> California Atty. Gen.Kamala D. Harris, whose office maintains that evidence still points to Larsen’s guilt, accuses him and his attorneys of filing a petition seeking his release more than six years after he was legally required to do so. Prosecutors question whether the judges had the authority to hear Larsen’s petition for release.

But sometimes it turns out to be “we found a friendly judge much later who was willing to break the law for us”. We don’t know.

This wasn't an "honest mistake" conviction. Trying to turn a complete embarrassment of a legal process, driven by a racially biased witch hunt into a moral win is like saying that "in here we rape you with lube and a condom".

What's even better than correcting mistakes and feeling warm and fuzzy inside because you're better than some of the worst is to not make them in the first place, at least when they're as avoidable as this one.

Also, you better got some dollar to merit the lube. From his gofoundme last update:

> America has a great legal system if only you can afford it

It's pretty revolting that you would turn this into a narrative of American exceptionalism.

As opposed to 'disappeared', for suspected espionage?

Not sure the Americans are in any position to preach when it comes to their incarceration and capital punishment policies.

In comparison to the People's Republic of China?

In comparison to the country that shoots you in the face for being the wrong skin color?

Those occur at about the statistics of airplane crashes. Huge disasters obviously, but it’s a function of our policy of everyone having a gun.

You can't really compare the two countries. The US has 4x (531/100k) the number of prisoners per capita that China (119/100k) has.

And crime in almost every category is 3-18x higher (+ 83x more assaults than China)

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/China/Unit...

The only category china ranks higher in is corruption and bribery and oddly the number of judges and prosecutors employed.

The definition of assault and the reporting rate are completely different. You can’t compare those numbers just looking them up on the Internet.

Atleast they don’t let corrupt prison officers harvest their prisoners organs

There's literally a prison organ theft scandal ongoing in Alabama at the moment.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/18/us/organs-removed-decease...

Which makes it ok.

Is this even a standard worth comparing ourselves to? That’s a bar so low that “at least we don’t …” doesn’t even make sense

Yeah they do sadly :(

If he hadn't had loads of money to fight this for ages he would have been rotting in jail right now. Perhaps the solitary confinement he was put in initially.