Murder case dropped after man serves 25 years in prison
Prosecutors dropped all charges Thursday against a Detroit man who accused police of pinning a murder on him by seizing his mother's gun and switching bullets in a case that kept him in prison for 25 years....
The 51-year-old let out a deep sigh and hugged and shook hands with his legal team, mostly lawyers and students from the Innocence Clinic at University of Michigan's law school. They asked the judge to reopen the case in 2016 after photos of two bullets taken from the victim, Gerry Bennett, did not resemble the bullets that were examined by a gun expert before trial 25 years ago....
David Moran, director of the Innocence Clinic, said police conduct was "criminal." But no retired officers can be pursued because too many years have passed....
I don't know if it's legally defensible, but my opinion is that a new crime occurs each day that the wrongly convicted stays in prison. The clock on the statute of limitations shouldn't start until the day of exoneration.
Abraham drew near, and said, "Will you consume the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous within the city? Will you consume and not spare the place for the fifty righteous who are in it? ... What if ten are found there?" He [The Lord] said, "I will not destroy it for the ten's sake."
-- about the destruction of Sodom which God did destroy after rescuing most of Lot's family (Genesis 18:23-32)
"Avoid legal punishments as far as possible, and if there are any doubts in the case then use them, for it is better for a judge to err towards leniency than towards punishment."
"Invoke doubtfulness in evidence during prosecution to avoid legal punishments."
-- Muhammad (tome [Jami'] of at-Tirmidhi)
"it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death."
-- 12th-century legal theorist Maimonides
"one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally."
-- Sir John Fortescue's De Laudibus Legum Angliae (c. 1470)
"It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned."
-- Increase Mather, 3 October 1692, while decrying the Salem witch trials
"All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds it better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer."
-- English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.
"it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer".
-- Benjamin Franklin
Authoritarian personalities tend to take the opposite view; Bismarck is believed to have stated that "it is better that ten innocent men suffer than one guilty man escape". Pol Pot made similar remarks. Wolfgang Schäuble referenced this principle while saying that it is not applicable to the context of preventing terrorist attacks. Former American Vice President Dick Cheney said that his support of American use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture) against suspected terrorists was unchanged by the fact that 25% of CIA detainees subject to that treatment were later proven to be innocent, including one who died of hypothermia in CIA custody. "I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent." Asked whether the 25% margin was too high, Cheney responded, "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. ... I'd do it again in a minute."
Blackstone's formulation