criminal justice

Quick Thought; fatal damage to our justice system

The Times has a story out today about Steven Avery. The man was released, after 18 years in prison, because DNA evidence showed he was wrongly convicted. Last week he was charged with murder.

The Times reports that this series of events may spell trouble for groups, such as the Innocence Project, that seek to verify convictions with DNA evidence. What strikes me is this tagline to the column, on the front page of the web site:

Steven Avery has left all who championed his cause facing the uncomfortable consequences of their success.

Allow me to submit that the sentiment represented in that sentence does violent harm to our system of criminal law.

A trial in criminal court is about the crime that the defendant is convicted of doing. It is not a referendum on the person. And to the extent we allow the trial to lean towards the latter, we further pervert the fairness and nobility of our justice system.

A criminal trial rests firmly as a pursuit of the facts leading to and within the crime. Imagine the alternative: we lock people up because we do not like them. Maybe they are social outcasts; maybe they appear dangerous; maybe they spoke out too much against a prominent figure. Our system works because it stubbornly demands precision and caution in its process.

The Times tagline turns all this on its head. The subtext suggests that allowing people like Avery to walk, upon a finding of innocence in this case, only allows him to commit a crime elsewhere.

Think about that...this man will commit another crime, so what if he didn't do it this time, you know he'll just do something when he gets out...let's keep him locked up.

That is not the country I live in.