| Benjamin Franklin said, “better that one hundred guilty men go free than one innocent person should suffer.”
- Benjamin Franklin didn't "say" it if "say" means originate. franklin had it from Blackstone, who had it from Sergeant Hawkins who had it, probably, from Adam's off ox.
Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet Secret police commanded “better to execute ten innocent men than to leave one guilty man alive.| Source.
- Volokh has no source for this, as you may have noticed, and although he knows you're wrong about Franklin he can't be bothered to get the Blackstone reference right, as I found when I checked him. Don't you bother to check your own sources? Awarding Volokh any credibility is stupid in the first place, but even if he had lots of credibility you shouldn't cite what you haven't seen.
Franklin’s words epitomize the criminal justice system that America believes itself to have, one that is just and democratic. Statements like Dzerzhinsky’s are used as examples of “other” governments, which stand for injustice and oppression. Thurman Arnold says that social creeds, like justice and democracy, mean nothing outside of the institutions which they are attached to | Works Cited. America’s use of the death penalty exemplifies this. While statement’s like Franklin’s purport the United States to be fair and democratic, the facts show that capital punishment resounds in injustice. In a nation that often separates “us,” systems upholding similar values, from “them,” systems to be feared or conquered, America’s utilization of capital punishment puts the US in the latter category. |