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I am so sorry that you do not have a clue as to what fairness really is.

Think about this for one minute of your life;

You are wrongly and falsely accused of a crime that would, if convicted, put you on death row. You go to trial and are found innocent, but you are not acquitted as you would be under the double jeopardy law of today. You face a lifetime of courtroom appearances and are constantly called upon to prove your innocence each and every day for the rest of your life.

I have spent my entire adult life working in and around and with law enforcement in one capacity or another. Cops are Human, and we Humans are not perfect – we are prone to making mistakes. Jury's are Human, as are Judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers – Yes, even these people sometimes also make mistakes and some innocent people are wrongly convicted and sometimes guilty people are wrongly acquitted. We have the appeals system to serve those wrongly convicted. But history has shown us that those wrongly acquitted almost always commit other crimes and more often than not wind up where they belong. O.J. Simpson is a prime example.

I know more than most that our justice system seems sometimes flawed – But I also know that it is the best and most fair justice system on this planet.

Yea, you're right PapaDawg. There are a lot of people falsely accussed.

But what do you do if someone who is guilty is acquitted?

I refer you to my earlier statement, re-posted here since you obviously did not read my earlier post in its entirety;

"But history has shown us that those wrongly acquitted almost always commit other crimes and more often than not wind up where they belong. O.J. Simpson is a prime example. "

A justice system which more likely skews toward punishing the innocent unfairly is what you'd get if you abolished this rule. The punishment of the innocent is a far bigger moral problem than the absence of punishment for the guilty. Mainly because the innocent have done nothing wrong (or at least, not the thing they are charged with as a legal infraction), and the guilty may or may not do something else in the future for which they may again be charged, but we do not know for certain that they will pursue only criminal actions moving forward. The reason we have punishment in society is not for retribution of the victims of crimes, but to make it clear that certain actions should impose very high costs not ordinarily associated with them, costs such as loss of freedoms and imprisonment. Therefore it really doesn't matter in the specific case whether a guilty person goes free or not (it manifestly does matter at the macro level whether criminals are detained or not, since most crime is committed by relatively few people and detaining these people tends to lower crime rates), but rather that a not-guilty person perceives that they might be caught, charged, and convicted of a crime if they were to do it, decides this cost is too high, and restrains their behavior.

I consider it poor public execution of policy if someone (guilty) is charged, tried, and acquitted, but this is both a reasonably low moral concern (punishment of wrong doing represents a cost to society as well, even if it does present some external benefits), and far less likely a problem (acquittals are different than hung juries, mistrials, and other legal events which might not establish guilt).

Hmmmmm?!?

Sounds like a complicated explanation of a simple answer. Are you sure you are not a lawyer?

This is basic moral philosophy, not sophistry.

I let the lawyers do the sophistry.

I think it should because you can get away with this and you could have murdered someone and get away with it!