The first site below suggests US wrongful conviction rates range from .5 percent to 10 percent. It cites for the lower rate a source who I think is the author of the next URL:
I would be very surprised if Italy’s legal system turned out to have a significantly worse rate.
“Convicts eventually proven innocent” is, sadly, bound to be a lower fraction than wrongful conviction rate—i.e. you get wrongful conviction rates by extrapolating one way or another from attested cases.
Thanks for the link. I get that “Convicts eventually proven innocent” is most likely a lower bound (probably not too many guilty ones later exonerated?), but I figured I’d have to work from there to get a crude guess.
On one hand, even 10% isn’t all that bad in an absolute sense- most of the deterrent is being had with not too much additional waste. On the other, that means that our trial and jury system is probably worse than I thought, if it’s true that “most” people charged with a crime plead guilty.
I’ll look up the statistics and report back in a couple days.
The first site below suggests US wrongful conviction rates range from .5 percent to 10 percent. It cites for the lower rate a source who I think is the author of the next URL:
http://www.caught.net/innoc.htm
http://www.abanet.org/crimjust/spring2003/conviction.html
I would be very surprised if Italy’s legal system turned out to have a significantly worse rate.
“Convicts eventually proven innocent” is, sadly, bound to be a lower fraction than wrongful conviction rate—i.e. you get wrongful conviction rates by extrapolating one way or another from attested cases.
Thanks for the link. I get that “Convicts eventually proven innocent” is most likely a lower bound (probably not too many guilty ones later exonerated?), but I figured I’d have to work from there to get a crude guess.
On one hand, even 10% isn’t all that bad in an absolute sense- most of the deterrent is being had with not too much additional waste. On the other, that means that our trial and jury system is probably worse than I thought, if it’s true that “most” people charged with a crime plead guilty.
I’ll look up the statistics and report back in a couple days.