Tradeoffs necessary in pursuit of law and order

Patrick McIlheran comments in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on State v. Dubose (subject of this earlier post.

It would be bad policy to trust police and prosecutors completely, as the Constitution points out, but it would be bad policy, too, to presume that they're bunglers or malfeasants. If that's not the explicit message of the "innocence" advocates, it is plainly the impression they leave. Read their literature and you get the sense they believe justice is commonly denied.

Such intimations come at a cost. If we presume that police and prosecutors will bungle things - best they not even show suspects to eyewitnesses, since they'll probably screw it up - then we're careless with the faith people have in government to do its first duty: protect civil order.