Yes, because innocence is presumed. When a court finds "not guilty", it is logically equivalent to "innocent". It's not a free pass to say "he was only found not guilty; he's not innocent".
> I'd much rather 100 guilty persons go free than to wrongly convict a single innocent as a critically important ideal. Any "reform" that has an obvious mechanism that would bias the system to erode that in favor of a lesser benefit is cause for concern for me.
That biased mechanism already exists, although not to the same extent. A judge/jury who can't logically infer guilt would still rather lock up a scumbag, especially if they're likely to repeat offend. A large part of this principle has to be embodied in the judge/jury itself.
Not that it should be made worse. I suppose juries could be given leeway over the decision to reimburse, but it would be a larger change to our current system (nothing I've advocated for here is an actual change to the law, just an enforcement of proper civil liability). And you could still end up with the same problem where juries acquit yet routinely don't reimburse because "taxpayers shouldn't pay for someone being at the wrong place". It's less bad than that same person being in prison, but it's still wrong. Cops see "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride" as a feature, but everybody who believes in the rule of law should see it as a bug.
Of course nothing proposed here would change the fact that the sheer majority of cases plea out due to draconian punishments for nonviolent crimes, and so even long-held legal principles don't end up applying. But the present situation is tough precisely because there are multiple pathologies that all corrupt the justice system away from the fundamental ideals it purports.
Yes, because innocence is presumed. When a court finds "not guilty", it is logically equivalent to "innocent". It's not a free pass to say "he was only found not guilty; he's not innocent".
> I'd much rather 100 guilty persons go free than to wrongly convict a single innocent as a critically important ideal. Any "reform" that has an obvious mechanism that would bias the system to erode that in favor of a lesser benefit is cause for concern for me.
That biased mechanism already exists, although not to the same extent. A judge/jury who can't logically infer guilt would still rather lock up a scumbag, especially if they're likely to repeat offend. A large part of this principle has to be embodied in the judge/jury itself.
Not that it should be made worse. I suppose juries could be given leeway over the decision to reimburse, but it would be a larger change to our current system (nothing I've advocated for here is an actual change to the law, just an enforcement of proper civil liability). And you could still end up with the same problem where juries acquit yet routinely don't reimburse because "taxpayers shouldn't pay for someone being at the wrong place". It's less bad than that same person being in prison, but it's still wrong. Cops see "you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride" as a feature, but everybody who believes in the rule of law should see it as a bug.
Of course nothing proposed here would change the fact that the sheer majority of cases plea out due to draconian punishments for nonviolent crimes, and so even long-held legal principles don't end up applying. But the present situation is tough precisely because there are multiple pathologies that all corrupt the justice system away from the fundamental ideals it purports.