Why is lying acceptable?
Less convincingly, when you separate a group of suspects and claim that Kyle gave you up when he did nothing of the sort.
Yes, it may lead to some bad guys getting caught who otherwise wouldn't have been. But that is not an excuse if it also compromises the rule of law for innocent people.
This isn’t a hypothetical, people have literally gone to prison for decades before some new DNA evidence exonerates them and the ‘accomplice’ admits they lied…
To be clear, the prosecutors should be held to a high standard, and they should be forced to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. But we should also be a little more cautious about proclaiming the “innocence” of people whose guilty convictions are found to be problematic. In case that evidence had been excluded on time, it is possible that the prosecutors could still have built a solid case that relied on different evidence.
That's literally how innocence works though. From the universal declaration of human rights: "Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a public trial ...". If they weren't proven guilty they are presumed innocent.
If the guy who done it was blonde, 6’2”, driving a red Mercedes, and he wrapped the body in a green rug, and it turns out that the bloodstains on green rug of the 6’2” blonde guy with the red Mercedes that you arrested for it are only actually 70% likely to be the victim’s rather than 99.5%, while LEGALLY the guy in prison now can benefit from the presumption of innocence, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable if he moved in downstairs.
Proven innocence would be “oh we have irrefutable video evidence that this guy was two states away at the time”.
Suggested reading on this topic: https://freakonomics.com/2008/08/are-the-fbis-probabilities-...
It unfortunately has a side effect, the reciprocating "my friend did it" defense works really well in those places - Scandinavia, I'm looking at you.
Given two murder suspects, but no witnesses, and no evidence of who actually delivered the final blow, it doesn't matter if both would be covered in the victims blood. As long as they point blame at each other and shut up, chances are they will get away with murder.
They would still very likely go to prison of course, but for some "lesser" crime like assault.