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Comment by nemo44x | Hacker News Reader

Our justice system works well. You are confusing your own emotional feelings for what you would have liked to see with the reality of what was able to be proven without reasonable doubt. The type of populist mob justice you allude* to is not just at all.

*(Fixed grammar error specified below)

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Our justice system is terrible. Look at the huge racist disparities like 5-10x rate of incarceration of Black people for weed, even though Whites use weed at similar rates. Then the for profit prisons, ridiculously high sentences, appalling prison conditions, and mass incarceration of 21% of the world's prison population.

No one goes to prison for using weed. You go to prison for trafficking it.

Our prison population reflects our crime rate demographics. Certain demographics commit far more crime, especially violent crime, than other demographics. They are represented accordingly in our prisons.

Justice is pretty fair and blind across the board. Do the crime then do the time.

Your comments in regard to this case are right but our justice system does not work well. People who can afford lawyers do much better than those who can’t.

Unless someone is “alluding” to a lynching then “populist mob justice” is a gross mischaracterization of laypeople expressing disdain for the justice system.

"allude" is to imply while "elude" is the evade

Eluded so completely from the comment that it didn’t appear at all.

If “proven beyond a reasonable doubt” keeps leading to bad outcomes, maybe that’s not the right standard.

That is a dangerous precedent to remove. Certainly we don't want to replace judges and juries with Twitter polls.

Sure, but if the precedent isn’t generating justice, then it’s worth considering alternatives. There is no holy scripture which says proof beyond a reasonable doubt is the correct way to run a justice system.

If you can't prove they are guilty, how do you know it isn't generating justice?

If not here where would you rather draw the line? Incarcerate 1 more innocents s that 1 more guilty makes it into jail?

We could have a more likely than not standard of 51% chance like civil law, and 49% of inmates are innocent.

Would you personally really want to send someone to prison if you had reasonable doubts of their guilt?

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