Better than ten guilty persons

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A reflection and prayer to start the day with Canon Simon Doogan. Good morning. ‘It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer’. Other legal maxims made a whole lot more sense to me as a floundering young law student It turns out, that eighteenth century wording is more restrained than the fifteenth century version, according to which twenty guilty escapees is better than one innocent condemned. Both, mind you, fall far short of the thousand escapees reckoned preferable by Jewish legal theorist Maimonides. Rhetoric aside, it’s another example of a secular legal principle emerging from a sacred source and worldview. Do not kill the innocent or those in the right, commands God in verse 7 of Exodus chapter 23, for I will not acquit the guilty. Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale writing in his private diary in 1668, reinforced this understanding by coupling it to Moses’ stipulation that in cases carrying the death penalty, at least two witnesses must give testimony. His point being, that the guilty need not simply go free because the earthly bar for conviction is high. God can and will intervene supernaturally, Hale insisted, perhaps through evidence emerging later, or possibly an accused’s personal journey of confession and repentance. An innocent life lost, over against that, is lost to the world. All of which makes spiritual sense to me yet raises the question: what would our criminal justice system lose had it failed in the beginning to build in room for amendment of life? Lord we pray for those whose lives have effectively been lost to miscarriages of justice: freedom, family, career, reputation. Hold our legal system to the highest standards of truth and transparency. Amen