It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.
--
Sefer Hamitzvot [Book of the Commandments], commentary on Negative Commandment 290, as translated by Charles B. Chavel (1967); also in Defending the Human Spirit : Jewish Law's Vision for a Moral Society (2006) by Warren Goldstein, p. 269Maimonides
One would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.
John Fortescue
It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.
William Blackstone
Just as the liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe any one else; so a guilty society can more easily be persuaded that any apparently innocent act is guilty than that any apparently guilty act is innocent.
George Bernard Shaw
In England a man is presoomed to be innocent till he's proved guilty an' they take it f 'r granted he's guilty. In this counthry a man is presoomed to be guilty ontil he's proved guilty an' afther that he's presoomed to be innocent.
Finley Peter Dunne
That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a maxim that has been long and generally approved; never, that I know of, controverted.
Benjamin Franklin
Maimonides
Mair, Eddie
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