“Better 1000 guilty men go free than one innocent person spend one day in jail.”
I’ve heard this argument, and it sounds good on the surface, as most sophistry is intended to.
But, if it were “better” to let 1000 guilty murderers go free than one innocent person be sent to jail,
what of the inevitable victims of one of those guilty set free?
Is his/her life worthless in this philosophy?
Go to Blackstone and research the biblical roots of his ideas. We have forgotten that much divine mercy attends our own lives and want to engineer social structures from scratch.