Joel Jacobsen

In 1885 Joseph Wesley Donovon published the third edition of his Modern Jury Trials and Advocates, including in it an address by the former lieutenant governor of Michigan, the staunch Union man Charles S. May, in his day an admired advocate and orator (the terms were virtually synonymous in the 19th century, when America was a nation of connoisseurs of forensic oratory).  The address, entitled "Trial by Jury," has this passage:

But it is in another and greater field that the trial by jury becomes a matter of supreme concern to the citizen, and rises to the dignity of one of the chief props and bulwarks of civil liberty.  Here its use cannot well be questioned.  Here, certainly, it needs no defense.  The leaning of the law, in criminal causes, should be to the side of protection and humanity.  And so it is declared to be.  The State is great and powerful, and overshadows the individual; and though it be necessary for its good that crime be prevented and punished, yet the State is not greatly harmed by the escape of a guilty man.  But the conviction and punishment by death or lingering imprisonment of an innocent man is a thing unspeakably shocking.  No care can be too great to prevent such a tragedy. 

(Try reading that aloud.  The phrases fit your breathing the way a well-made tool fits your hand, and you know at once where the emphases should be, where your voice should rise and fall.)

Eloquence often has only a passing acquaintanceship with logic, and it might seem to be missing the point of this passage to point out the shell game: the effect of freeing the guilty is measured with reference to the an artificial entity, the State, while the effect of punishing the innocent is measured with reference to the feelings of individuals. 

But note something more basic: the lawyer sees "the State" in courtroom terms, as the party seeking a courtroom victory over the defendant, rather than as the representative of the people seeking to fulfill the people's wishes, as expressed by their democratically-enacted laws.  Criminals are convicted for the good of State, not of its people.  The concept that a government has a duty to protect its people from violent death and sexual degradation doesn't even enter into it.  It's just a lawsuit.

Even more tellingly, the lawyer looks only at what happens in the courtroom: the accused is convicted or he is acquitted, and that's the only thing that happens.  The story ends with the judge's gavel.

That was the viewpoint of a leader of the Bar in 1875.  It's still the viewpoint of leaders of the Bar, judges and law professors today.  There's what happens inside the courtroom over here, and reality over there, and only the first one counts.