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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

The justice system relies on the concept of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. That standard doesn’t mean “proved to be impossible to be innocent.”

In a system that is in a population of millions of people, there are bound to be edge cases where there’s a lot of damning evidence and people look guilty who just aren’t.

It’s one of the many arguments against capital punishment. It can’t be undone.

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> The justice system relies on the concept of guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Does it, in reality? With trials and layers being life destructibly expensive?

>It’s one of the many arguments against capital punishment. It can’t be undone.

Neither can time spent behind bars.

The time served can’t be undone but the incarceration can.

And there's little details like $320k settlements for wrongful imprisonment to help transition back out of prison... Harder when you're dead.

I’ve seen interviews with people how have been wrongfully imprisoned for extended periods and they’re changed in irreversible ways.

Some of them are unlikely to ever integrate back into normal society.

> Some of them are unlikely to ever integrate back into normal society.

This is an indictment of the system itself. If it damages innocent people who are wrongfully jailed so badly, how can anyone ever hope it'll turn actual criminals into citizens?

That’s also true. Though I’d see it as a separate, albeit related and just as crucial, point.

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