Why is it "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation

See http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/guilty.htm

http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2011/09/troy-davis.php

"Before one calls the Troy Davis execution a miscarriage of justice, as many reporters have knee-jerkingly indicated, one might want to read the 172-page opinion by a Clinton-appointed federal judge calling the late-invented claim of innocence 'smoke and mirrors.'"

But the general question remains.

It's more useful to look at the question in terms of error-risk than numbers of guilty people. Is it better to make it difficult to convict a person of a crime and increase the risk of acquitting a guilty person? Or is it better to make it easy to convict and increase the risk of convicting an innocent person? in a legal system that protects individual rights, it will be difficult to convict, and thus it is more likely that a guilty person will go free than that an innocent person will be convicted. Consider what happens in a legal system that makes conviction easy ... people are arrested and convicted because someone says they heard the suspect say something suspicious, or because the suspect's skin and eyes are a certain color. Looking at places where criminal conviction is relatively easy, you can see that it's difficult to contain things once you get started down that road. You end up with a situation where no one feels safe to talk or act. Here's a question I'd like to see addressed: in the U.S. right now, is it generally easier to convict a person with dark skin, just because they have dark skin? If this is true, it is certainly morally wrong, because it violates individuals' right to life and freedom. But it can be easy for someone who does not have dark skin to say, "This doesn't concern me." It's clear that, to the extent it damages the culture, it hurts everyone. There are businesses that don't get started, scientific discoveries that are not made, etc. if innocent people are put into prison or killed. But is there an additional effect on individuals? If I don't have dark skin, am I in more danger of being convicted for a crime I didn't do because of the way the law is enforced against a group of which I am not a member?