This question makes no sense. It's a fallacy. In reality, each person is already dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Jury nullification is a thing. If we're talking about laws, and the way that they're enforced: if the methodology is flawed, you improve it. You keep working with whatever works best, at the time, because it's all you can do. We already only (theoretically) punish those after they've exhausted their presumption of innocence. Most of the cases where this is not true is either due to corruption or incompetence; which are separate issues, altogether. Whoever asked this question is an arm-chair philosopher of the booziest order. I'm fully aware of where this quote comes from.
*edit: I thought this was askpoal, and that it was a question. I'm sure it was a novel idea back when it was first proposed ("okay guys: let's not lynch this dude 'till we can at least find out where the money we think he stole came from.")
(post is archived)