> Now, not knowing what you’re doing is a crime isn’t a legally sound defense argument, but it does raise serious questions about how we view punishment and those we deem should be punished.
> I don't agree with this because ignorance of the law is not usually an excuse
I think that mens rea[1] should be more broadly required. Our current system is such that virtually everyone is breaking the law and only enforcement and prosecutorial discretion protects us.
> It would be nice to live in a society when the certainty of someone having committed a crime directly relates to the justice system's proclamation of guilt.
Such a great distillation of the national shame of the United States. Agreed!
> "N Guilty Men" philosophical debates are too far above today's justice system for serious consideration.
I do not concur. I think that this is exactly the kind of thinking that we need to motivate ourselves to replace the current "criminal justice" system in full.
> I think it's something about remorse. Maintaining innocence when you know you're guilty shows a lack of remorse about what you've done. Admitting what you did and that you did it shows you at least know it's wrong and that you deserve some punishment.
Yeah, but that hinges entirely under the assumption that the accused is guilty.
>> That is a systemic problem, one which we don't have a good solution for.
There is a pretty straightforward solution. I'll leave to the reader whether or not it is a good one.
Redefine the crimes so they are easier to prove. In many cases that is going to involve moving from a mens rea (guilty mental state) of intentionally to recklessly, negligently or even eliminating mens rea altogether and just requiring an actus reus (guilty act). In some cases that might mean criminalizing more acts of omission instead of requiring proof of an overt bad act.
I want to be clear that this wouldn't be costless. It goes against much our existing framework for what makes people criminals. It would increase the chance that someone who made honest mistakes would be criminally punished. But remember Blackstone said that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than one man suffer, not one hundred, not one thousand and certainly not all the guilty men. And he was writing in an era when all felonies were capital crimes.
A small percentage of murderers getting off on technicalities is something a society can live with, even be proud of in a strange way, but when the exception swallows the rule that society is playing with fire.
>What if a person is technically guilty but they have convinced themselves that they are not? Be it ignorance of the law, or just arrogance? They'll get let off.
Conversely what if someone who is easily brainwashed has been convinced they are guilty and given false memories?
> Many people have lost innocent-until-proven-guilty in their minds.
It's worse. Sometimes I feel like "innocent-until-proven-guilty" is considered a flaw in the system that should be eradicated to make it easier to catch/punish criminals.
> Following this argument, nobody is culpable for any crime they may commit, because their behavior is fully determined by their biology and environment. Try that in a court.
I’m not sure I understand the contradiction there. Are you saying that a court doesn’t care enough about any mental disorder which may have led one to commit a crime to completely absolve them? That’s does indeed seem to be the case in many areas, and for good reason: one important function of our legal system is to prevent future harm.
> It is quite popular to be consistent and defend anybody who isn't convicted of a crime.
I don’t know how popular this is, or at least how popular it should be.
Conviction is based on the extremely high bar of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This is the standard for depriving a person of their liberty.
Society rightly does not operate at that standard. Conviction was never meant to be a proxy for whether you ought to do business with somebody.
Think about killers who “got off on a technicality,” where everyone knew they were guilty. Or open criminals who for whatever reason were unable to face a jury, like many mass shooters. It just doesn’t make sense to say “well the courts never formally convicted them so we have a duty to defend them.”
Sorry if this is long-winded. I am just alarmed by this trend of equating legal standards with social standards.
> court is already to settle dueling theoretical models, and it will still settle them by considering facts and circumstances
No, it starts with the facts and circumstances and then lenses them through the law.
> should be quite exceptional for a crime to depend on the victim's mental state
It is. Emotional damage per se being remediable in law is mostly a myth. This is why we default to actual damages; it largely sidesteps alternate timelines and the unknowable mens rea.
> When you're innocent you think that your innocence means something. It doesn't. Discount it and move on. ... If you're guilty ... no idea how to help you.
Not sure how to read that. Is this consistent?
I'm not trying to bait or anything. Judicial institutions aren't about some objective truth somewhere out in the universe. Best case scenario is that their processes provide stability. (The nice, good governance kind of stability, therefore creating legitimacy, being predictable etc.)
I can therefore fully understand the first part. No idea why they chose to return to the question of guilt again later in their comment.
It wouldn't change a thing in the usefulness of their advice.
It's called "mens rea"
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