Court Opinion

ID: 9607764
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:01:47.339748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:39.961994
License: Public Domain

BROWN, Justice,
specially concurring.
I agree that this case must be reversed. However, I do not agree with everything said by the majority in its reaction to the dissent. In this portion of its opinion the majority refers to a suspect statistic to the effect that numerous innocent persons are languishing in prison. The specter of innocent people being charged and convicted is a myth, perpetuated and magnified by fictitious television movies.
I do not know of any empirical study that supports the statistic referred to by the majority. It sounds like a convenient figure plucked out of the air by an organization which has a philosophy that no one should be convicted of anything.
In America the possibility of an innocent person being convicted and his conviction being upheld is minimal. At all stages of a charge, investigation, trial and appeal an accused is clothed with innumerable safeguards to insure that he is not wrongfully convicted.
Lastly, the majority’s reference to witch trials in England in the 16th Century, the Salem, Massachusetts trial of witches in 1692 and what might have happened in the Soviet Union is misplaced; these trials do not have a remote relationship to America’s justice system.