Scores in N.C. are legally 'innocent,' yet still imprisoned
usatoday.com
usatoday.com
The quote seems like it may be out of context even in the article, but seems like a good capture of the problems with total dedication to process over discretion and justice described (or so I gather, have only read reviews of yet) in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice" by William Stuntz.
On the other hand, executive pardons and commutations have always been intended as a partial safety valve against too process-focused jurisprudence: the idea is that a thoughtful executive has the power to say, "this is not the just outcome" in specific cases, approving exceptions outside of the usual proceedings of the law. Unfortunately for that theory, though, in the past few decades pardons and commutations have become a big political risk. If you pardon someone, you get no major benefit (a handful of bleeding-heart liberals will like you, but not many), unless the person is really well-connected. But, you incur a bit potential risk if the person you pardoned ends up committing a future crime; the "Willie Horton problem". So the safe course of action is to let ten innocent people rot in jail, rather than risk pardoning a dangerous person (the exact opposite of the traditional maxim).
Here's the quote:
“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence’ is constitutionally cognizable.”
I personally loved Alan Dershowitz's retort, though it's a lot less relevant than the words of someone who sits on the Bench:
"Let us be clear precisely what this means. If a defendant were convicted, after a constitutionally unflawed trial, of murdering his wife, and then came to the Supreme Court with his very much alive wife at his side, and sought a new trial based on newly discovered evidence (namely that his wife was alive), these two justices would tell him, in effect: “Look, your wife may be alive as a matter of fact, but as a matter of constitutional law, she’s dead, and as for you, Mr. Innocent Defendant, you’re dead, too, since there is no constitutional right not to be executed merely because you’re innocent.”"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/08/18/scalias-cat...
The thing is, the Law Institute of Victoria did a study with the general public, and found that when give the details of the case in question, they suggested shorter sentences than the courts were actually assigning. Therein lies the problem with listening to the tabloids - there's no detail.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that politicians never listen to the public when it comes to something as simple as their own payrises, so why should you consider the general public to be the final authority on something as complex and nuanced as law and order?
Public officials have great power, and there needs to be an equally great responsibility and consequence for abusing that power. And yes, being ignorant or making the wrong decision counts as abuse of power.