That is why the exercise of that governmental power against an individual charged with a crime and the potential for deprivation of liberty as a result needs be done in a manner assuring that the processes are completely fair.
It turns out that Forcelli has for several years been involved in developing an unusual speciality. As a federal agent, he has been reinvestigating cases that were considered solved and uncovering evidence to free people imprisoned for crimes they didn't commit.
As the science behind criminal investigation progresses, previous standard and accepted processes which may have helped in convictions are found sufficiently flawed to cast doubt on the certainty and thus the fairness of those convictions.
Expert testimony that was once taken as gospel, on matters ranging from ballistics and fingerprints to fire investigation, has been found wanting. A prevalent source of error is mistaken eyewitness testimony -- and even more dubious is the testimony of a jailhouse informant who swears the person charged has confessed to him, barely acknowledging his own testimony is tainted by an offer of reduction in sentence.
The irony in Forcelli's story is that while he has always been a conscientious, driven investigator, in his first case as a cop, in 1995, he arrested a man who would be convicted of second-degree murder based on a false witness identification.
Now, 20 years later, Forcelli, who eventually found the real murderer, is trying to get his own convict out. That's harder to do than to put someone inside in the first place.
Wrongful convictions are more often than not the result of many people in the system -- police, prosecutors, juries, judges -- all doing their jobs in a process that itself is flawed.
Chester took the system in New Zealand to task in his column for the evidence of institutional bias, where a rich white kid got a community sentence after assaulting a police officer while a Maori kid in similar circumstances went to jail.
Chester showed courage in acknowledging that this is but one incident among many that demonstrate an entrenched structural bias along racial and socio-economic lines.
It's not enough, though, to identify and acknowledge the existence of the problem. The research demonstrating inequity of disposition must become a part of the continuing education of people involved in the criminal justice system at all levels.
If we continue without corrective effort, a system flawed by such bias endangers the confidence we need to have in the fair outcomes of our justice system. When we protect the rights of the despised among us, we work to ensure that the democracy works and that its security apparatus, criminal justice, operates in fairness.
While New Zealand strives for fairness, it sometimes fails. We must not forget Teina Pora, nor the homophobic hysteria behind the flawed conviction of Peter Ellis. We need, too, to accord justice at last to Scott Watson, convicted on flimsy evidence and the improper testimony of a jailhouse informant.
�Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who migrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.
