'Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer'

English judge William Blackstone wrote this line in his Commentaries on the Laws of England in the 1760s, and it became a founding principle of criminal justice in the common-law world. It explains why prosecutors must prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt rather than defendants proving innocence. Others picked different ratios: Benjamin Franklin later argued for a hundred guilty to one innocent.

— William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England — Book 4, 1769
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