What if, instead of trying to find incriminating evidence, law-enforcement officials could be made responsible for trying to exonerate those charged with crimes?

Adnan Syed spent more than two decades in prison before a judge, in September, vacated his murder conviction. The next month, the state’s attorney for Baltimore City told journalists that Syed had been “wrongly convicted” and dropped charges against him. Justice moved slowly in his case: Only recently did an investigation uncover that prosecutors in his trial might have failed to hand over relevant evidence to the defense, and new DNA testing found no traces of Syed on the murder victim’s clothes. Those revelations came years after the popular podcast Serial raised consequential questions about his conviction, which seems to have been a major factor leading to his release from prison. That Syed’s fate followed from his good fortune—attracting the attention of a journalist with a national audience—should not give us faith in our legal system’s ability to sort the innocent from the guilty. Luck is an unreliable defense, but it is often the only hope for falsely accused people. The government has no general obligation to search for truth or, more particularly, exonerating evidence, even though the fate of an innocent person may hinge on whether it is discovered.

What if the whole system were inverted? What if, instead of trying to find incriminating evidence, law-enforcement officials were responsible for trying to...

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