Better That Ten Guilty Men…
Alexander Volokh
in BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT (Larry King ed., 2006)
“Better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer,” said
English jurist William Blackstone. The ratio 10:1, now known as the “Blackstone
ratio,” expresses the classic Anglo-American ideas of the presumption of
innocence and (insofar as the statement speaks of “guilt,” “conviction,”
“imprisonment,” and the like) the burden of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt”
that prevails in criminal law.
But why ten? Other eminent legal authorities through the ages have put
their weight behind other numbers. “One” has appeared on Geraldo. “It’s better
for four guilty men to go free than one innocent man to be imprisoned,” says
basketball coach George Raveling. However, “it’s better to turn five guilty men
loose than it is to convict one innocent one,” according to Mississippi’s former
state executioner, roadside fruit stand operator Thomas Berry Bruce, who ought to
know. “It is better to let nine guilty men free than to convict one innocent man,”
counters Madison, Wisconsin, lawyer Bruce Rosen. Justice Benjamin Cardozo
certainly believed in five for execution, and allegedly favored ten for
imprisonment, which is a bit counterintuitive. Benjamin Franklin thought “that it
is better a hundred guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should
suffer.” Mario Puzo’s Don Clericuzio heard about letting a hundred guilty men go
free and, “struck almost dumb by the beauty of the concept - became an ardent
patriot.” Denver radio talk show host Mike Rosen claims to have heard it argued
“in the abstract, that it’s better that 1000 guilty men go free than one innocent man
be imprisoned,” and says of the American judicial system, “Well, we got our
wish.”
PDF WARNING:
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=alexander_volokh By this philosophy we should let them all go.