Was the outcome of Dmitry Karamazov's trial "good"?
A brief look into axiology and law
In Brothers Karamazov, Dmitry is facing charges for murder, of which there is a mountain of evidence pointing towards his guilt. At trial, the jury correctly interprets the evidence and finds him guilty. But in reality, he is innocent. Is this “good”?
From a judicial efficiency standpoint, “good” is any outcome where the jury arrives at a verdict based on correctly interpreted evidence. If you’re unconvinced, just think of the opposite: a jury that has overwhelming evidence for a certain outcome but chooses the contrary. One would assume ignorance, strong-arming, or corruption was at play. As long as the evidence reaches the threshold above “reasonable doubt” (however that’s defined), then a priori this is a “good” outcome: a legal system that maximizes the chances of being correct.
But how can an outcome where an innocent man goes to jail ever be good? When the truth is known, a “good” outcome is whenever the jury finds the truth. Guilty when guilty, and not-guilty when innocent.
Definition 1 says Dmitry’s verdict was “good”, since the jury followed the evidence, but Definition 2 says the verdict was “bad”, because an innocent man went to jail. How can we resolve this?
This situation doesn’t have to be resolved because both definitions belong to different domains. Definition 1 sits under the law, which uses juries as a resolution mechanism under conditions of uncertainty. In a world where we don’t know the truth, what’s good is maximizing our probabilities with the evidence presented to us. Definition 2 concerns axiology, which doesn’t care about uncertainty. Axiology asks “in a perfect world, what is good”, and in a perfect world, no innocent man ever goes to jail.
Law is a dispute resolution mechanism built for uncertainty, and axiology is asking what goodness looks like without it. To ask whether the outcome of Dmitry Karamazov’s trial was “good”, is really to ask whether we’re talking about axiology or law.