Jul 20 2013  Convictions, Not Acquittals, Are the Real Problem
Will Wilkinson points out an important paradox in the wake of
the Zimmerman verdict, that while the injustice in this case may
be that a guilty man went free, the larger and more common
injustice in our system is the innocent person, nearly always
poor and dark-skinned, who is convicted unjustly:   This is a
very good point, regardless of whether the outcome in this
particular case was correct or not. The astonishingly racist
nature of our criminal (in)justice system is found primarily in
convictions, not acquittals. And the overwhelming majority of
those convictions (well over 90%) are the result of guilty pleas
from those who have public defenders representing them (about
80%), with no resources or time to go to trial and mount a
defense at all.  Both are bad, of course — guilty people with
means getting off and innocent people without means getting
convicted. But the latter tends to have a much bigger effect on
far more people.   Skip to comme