Thread by @CBHessick

Hi to everyone who is just realizing that questions of factual guilt and innocence are complicated.
We rarely know, with 100% certainty, whether a particular person performed a particular act. As a society, we've had to make decisions about how to deal with this problem. 1/x

We've had to make decisions about who to trust with certain decisions, what type of evidence to allow them to consider, and how certain they have to be before declaring someone guilty.
The system we have is better than a lot of alternatives, but it is far from perfect. 2/x

Innocent people are convicted by juries, and other innocent people are pressured into pleading guilty.
At the same time, we also know that some guilty people are acquitted at trial, and other guilty people are never even charged by prosecutors.

There are no simple answers about how to sort the innocent from the guilty.

And the chances of solving this problem in the context of a highly charged Supreme Court confirmation process are approximately zero. 4/x

But we should still ask question and try to make the system better.
And I hope that people who are outraged by the current news cycle pay more attention to the criminal justice system generally, and not just when it involves their political tribe. /end