Must a system of justice account for the fact that a certain percentage of convicted will be innocent?

Question

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070628/ts_alt_afp/usjusticejuries

The death penalty assumes an infallibility of judgement within any system that has it and I want to know if we are compfortable with a certain percentage of people wrongly convicted facing some of the horrors of our penal system. Compared to developing nations we have good prisons etc. but by a higher standard of effectiveness, humanity and deterence to which the rest of the devoloped world holds itself we may rightly be seen as barbaric and authoritarian.
There may be some flaws in the methodology with the approach detailed in the article submitted but the question it raises should be more thoroughly researched. Given the lower violent crime rate in EU and other developed countries we need to re-examine the whole "tough on crime" approach that seems to have bloated our prisons, created whole sub-classes of gangs and institutionalized recidivists on a whole sale basis while raising taxes with lower returns in human terms

Answer 1

Thanks for the link to the article. Many people assume, incorrectly, that DNA can guarantee we will not convict innocent people nor sentence innocent people to death for homicide. In fact, DNA is available at less than 10% of all murder scenes. In most of the 124 people released from death row with evidence of their innocence, the evidence that freed them was not DNA.

Our tough on crime approach and the eye for an eye mentality that it reflects need to be replaced by thinking that focuses on approaches of proven effectiveness.
Instead of wasting enormous resources -human lives, money and more, we should be investing in better education, jobs, smarter policing.

Answer 2

The more I look at the death penalty, the more I favor the idea of life with out parole. The death penalty does not provide a deterrent to crime any more than jail time does. As you point out, innocent people get sent to prison. The cost of all of the built in appeals and other processes surrounding the death penalty actual can make the costs exceed life time imprisonment.

Answer 3

Partly immigration has allot to do with the crime in the US. The other big factor is education or the lack of it! Larger cities also with employment problems have a high crime rate. All of these things could be addressed but unfortunately are viewed as strict expenditures and non profit endeavors. Well you know that big business is only interested in profits and not in the welfare of the country!

Answer 4

any system of punishment is flawed if humans make it, due to the law of association or whatrever its called. if the creator is flawed the creation therefore must be flawed.
e.g. people lie in court