Faith, Error, and the Death Penalty

The case of Troy Davis, put to death by the state of Georgia despite what looks to me and many others like reasonable doubt, puts us face to face with the awful psychological consequences of being wrong. The harder you look into questions of guilt and innocence, the more you come up against the powerful emotions that surround the possibility of error. Some people will do almost anything to avoid admitting that they did the wrong thing. There seems, for some people, to be nothing worse in life. This horror operates at both the personal and institutional levels. People hate to be wrong themselves and will fight like Tasmanian devils to avoid admitting error. People also hate for the institutions they work for and believe in to be questioned. Rather than focus on getting at the truth, many policemen, prosecutors, and judges act to defend their faith in the judicial system. If re-opening old cases would show that the courts made a mistake, they would rather leave an innocent man in prison. There is a class of person that simply cannot live with uncertainty and must believe absolutely in the rights and wrongs of things. Unfortunately, such people are probably more likely to get into criminal justice careers than those inclined toward skepticism. The result is a system that too often opposes the pursuit of the truth, when that pursuit risks showing that somebody has made an awful mistake. . .

The rest is on the bensozia web site.