You're probably right on the micro-causal issue here, but I believe prosecutors are aware of the general prison-crowding situation in their jurisdictions. Moreover, regardless of the precise causal links (whether it's through prosecutors or judges or parole boards or whatever) the fact remains that there's only so much space in prisons and that this space is, in practice, always filled. The criminal justice system is consistently faced with a massive surplus of sentence-years that could be legitimately applied to offenders relative to the amount of available space. The vast majority of offenders are getting off more lightly than the statutes, if strictly applied, would allow, so if any particular person gets off more lightly than the average, the gap will be made up. The fate of individual offenders has little to do with the aggregate incarceration level.

In the case of someone wrongly sent to prison or condemned to death and then later exonerated, we should have a legal career death penalty. The judge and prosecutor and jurors involved in a wrongful conviction should all be permanantly removed from any involvement in the legal system. This would include being barred from being a courthouse toilet attendant.

Umm, why? Aside from the catastrophic consequences it would have on the system--both in terms of the risk averseness on the original trial and well as maximum incentive to thwart any attempt to correct the mistake after trial--it's bizarre to think that most wrongful convictions are the result of malice or incompetence. Most convicted murderers are scumbags; even the ones later proven innocent of that particular crime often had an amazingly checkered history that lent credence to the existing evidence.

Wow, James, what an incredibly vicious, liberty-hating thing to write. Why should we be upset if the wrong person goes to jail? Why do you need to even ask this question? The answers are numerous and obvious.

One other thing:
it's bizarre to think that most wrongful convictions are the result of malice or incompetence...

As someone who has actually put people in jail, I wish I could impress upon you the pressure to produce a conviction. There is a strong institutional and personal motive to fudge just a little. It doesn't even seem wrong in the moment. We all know he's guilty, right? Only, the little "fudges" add up to material evidence, and suddenly someone is being tried on the basis of a tissue of lies.

What exactly is "exculpatory" DNA evidence? A DNA match, unless it can be explained some other way, is extremely damning. But unless the jury relied on their false belief that there was a DNA match, the lack of one proves almost nothing. It's akin to saying "they never found my fingerprints on the gun, therefore, I can't possibly be guilty."

Xrlq - the lack of evidence against a defendant is generally considered exculpatory. At least, in the American system.

In crime-reduction terms, the net effect of convicting any particular person -- even if he's guilty -- is likely to be zero.

heh sounds like that NYTimes headline a while back "Crime rate drops despite harsher sentencing."

Good thing there are no logic police or Yglesias would be jailed... DNA or not.

My understanding is that exculpatory DNA evidence is, e.g., a match of semen from a rape or murder/rape victim to DNA from a prison inmate *other* than the guy who is behind bars for having killed/raped her.

Or: blood left behind at a crime scene that had to belong to the perp for one reason or another (blood-spatter patterns prove this, or the blood is on the window sill where the perp gained entrance). Suddenly the blood is tested against that of the guy who supposedly did the crime years ago--and it ain't his.

That kind of thing. I think anyone who wants access to this kind of evidence should get it, and it *should* form the basis for a retrial. Fair's fair.

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