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Comment by apazzolini | Hacker News Reader

IMO the only fair solution is their own incarceration for the equal number of days, but the only real consequence will be a slap on the wrist.

Notable cunt Annie Dookhan[0] is responsible for putting up to 40,000 innocent people in jail by falsifying DNA records for the Massachusetts state AG. Over 21,000 cases have already been dropped. Her punishment? 3 years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Dookhan

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I think defendants should be compensated for fees and other damages for any level of failed prosecution, especially if they end up wrongfully incarcerated. If abusing the justice system has to come out of the budget, I think most of the incentives to do so will start to disappear.

What does 21 years of missed opportunity cost?

You would hope, a lot. There’s plenty of types of damage that can’t be repaired by money, but it’s generally how the courts choose to settle damages between parties. If one party illegally were to cause a comparable level of damage to another party, the damaged party would likely be entitled to a rather large amount of compensation for those damages. The fact that the government sees itself as above that level of accountability seems to be a significant part of the problem to me.

No amount of money can replace the decades they took away from him.

It's not about revenge, tit for tat or subjective fairness. It's about stopping the behavior by creating the right disincentive. If that happens to be jail for an equivalent number of years, then great.

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