We are so uncomfortable with the idea of uncertainty - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15084371
I was watching an Agatha Christie murder mystery (Dead Man's Folly, in case anyone was wondering) where a man was implicated for murder simply because an emerald ring was found in the pocket of his coat.

Here is the interchange between Poirot and the other detective:
"We got him, Poirot! Her ring was in the pocket of his blazer. That and all the hearsay evidence, I reckon we can get a conviction."
"For the murder of lady Stubbs, whose body has never been found?"
"Well, it was dumped in a river... floated out to sea, or... it'll turn up in time...
No, I'm sure she was killed here at Nass. She was dumped in the river, near where we found her hat. And Marlene Tucker saw it happen, so probably de Sousa fixed her too."
"No, it is not Etienne de Sousa. No, it does not make any sense."

Later Poirot goes on to elaborate in a conversation with Mrs Oliver:
"When is his trial?"
"Three weeks."
"Know the jury will take one look at de Sousa, and they will convict him. This man will hang!"

What I found remarkable was that a man could be convicted of murder, simply because a ring from a missing woman was found in his pocket. Not really any other solid evidence.
Was the plot in this story really believable or plausible?

After thinking about it, I realized that it was indeed actually very plausible, given the circumstances set up in the plot.

To give some background in the story, a woman (Marlene) is found murdered in the boathouse, and another woman (Lady Stubbs) goes missing at the same time.
Marlene is not really a woman of any importance, and no one can figure out a motive for murdering her, so it assumed that Marlene must have witnessed the murder of Lady Stubbs, or the dumping of her body into the river, and so the killer had to kill her too.

Etienne de Sousa is a wealthy man from the Caribbean who sails to the Nass estate on his yacht, which is anchored in the river not far from the secluded boat house. He came supposedly to visit his cousin, Hattie (Lady Stubbs), whom he had not seen in many years since she was child, although Lady Stubbs got very upset when she found out he was coming and refused to see him.

Well, as it later turns out in the story, Lady Stubbs is not dead. She faked her own disappearance, and her husband was the one who slipped the emerald ring into de Sousa's pocket when he met him, without him realizing it. Lady Stubbs was not the real Hattie. And de Sousa would have known that if he had seen her. The real Hattie was heir to a large fortune. Lady Stubbs (the imposter) was the one who killed Marlene in the boathouse because Marlene knew that Mr Stubbs was not who he appeared and had been blackmailing him. So Mr and Mrs Stubbs (not their real names) came up with a plan to kill Marlene, ending the blackmail, make Mrs Stubbs (the fake Hattie) disappear, and implicate de Sousa for the murders, removing him from the picture so that no one would realize that Mrs Stubbs had not been the real Hattie. Thus, no one would realize that the real Hattie had been killed months earlier, the very night she first arrived at the Nass estate.

But getting back to the point, all it would take to convict Etienne de Sousa is the disappearance of a woman (she left her hat at the banks of the river for police to find) and her emerald ring planted as evidence in the man's pocket.

(To be completely fair, there was also the murder of another woman at the same time, with nothing in particular to tie de Sousa to that murder, other than the suspicious circumstance that the boathouse was in a remote area, and de Sousa's yacht where he was staying was nearby along the river)

Now, let us bear in mind this story is set at a period of time before forensic evidence was widely available, and police often had little evidence to go on in murder investigations, so they had to make due with a lower level of evidence and circumstantial evidence. (The story was set in 1930s England, and this story was first published in 1956)
However, I don't believe things have actually changed that much. I believe such a story is still very plausible today.

A single piece of evidence could be enough to convict someone of murder.
In this case, an emerald ring planted in a man's coat pocket.

This story is just an introduction to my thesis. (Sorry for the long post!)

Most people do not like to think that someone could be convicted of a crime with such limited and questionable evidence. Certainly an emerald ring found in a man's coat pocket onboard his boat must not be enough evidence to convict a man of murder. But in this story it would have been.

We are uncomfortable with the idea of uncertainty. That men could be convicted unless there is absolutely certain evidence that they committed the crime. But the reality is there is a huge disconnect between how people think just ought to work and does work, versus how it actually does work, in real-life practice.

This can be a hard concept to understand unless you see some tangible examples. (Which is why I included that story in the introduction)

In real life, there are rarely any certainties. Everything operates based on probabilities.

People think a court and jury "determines" whether an accused person commits a crime.
That is not really true.
What they actually do is determine whether the level of evidence befits a punishment.
Juries will convict all the time when there is not absolute complete certain evidence. Saying that they should only convict when there is complete certain evidence is impractical, not pragmatic, and even naive.

And there is something else, an element of innate human psychology.
Once police have found the murderer, they stop looking. Once someone has been convicted of a murder, that's it. Case closed. Because they have "found" the murderer, it doesn't make any sense to keep looking.

But that's 'black and white' thinking, a simplistic view.

What if, after they convicted a man for a murder, then another suspect is found, with evidence suggesting that second man could have been the actual murderer?
We are not so comfortable with that.

That's the type of thing that should have been produced as evidence during the first trial, to cast doubt on the man's guilt. But what if that evidence does not emerge until after the man's conviction? Well, then it is very likely that evidence will be completely ignored, unless it was very strong and overwhelming.

Imagine, if for example, the emerald ring as found in one man's belongings, and a necklace that had also belonged to the disappeared girl were found in some other person's belongings, completely unrelated to the first man. Now then, the existing evidence would point in two different directions. If the ring was enough evidence to convict the first man, then, logically, shouldn't the necklace be enough to convict the other person? Shouldn't they both be convicted of murder?

Suppose there are two different possible motives for the killing, and it's very unlikely both of the suspects conspired together. That is, it's either one or the other.

It seems absurd for us to convict two different suspects of murder, when we know for certain one of them did not do it.
But I would question whether it would be logically inconsistent for us not to do that, when we would have convicted a single suspect based on the same level of evidence.
I mean, if you would convict one man, in those circumstances, why not two ?

Is it because, in that case, we know with absolute certainty that injustice is being carried out? That one of the two men must be innocent.
And in the case when it is just one suspect, we can "hope for the best" and think maybe he actually did it?

That is, the existent probability that an error is being made is less "in our faces". Easier not to look at.


How many times has a man already convicted of murder ever been let off the hook because they later found another suspect who is just as likely to have committed the murder as the first man?
My guess would be never.

I believe that is too psychologically uncomfortable for most people to be able to look at.
We want to think we found the right suspect, and we want to deal with reality in absolutes. "He committed the murder", "He didn't commit the murder", "The court determined from the evidence that he was guilty".
In short, we want to think reality is definitely known. It's not comfortable to think about the fact that there could be an inherent potential problem in system, or that things operate in a state of ambiguity, where nothing is known for certain. It's much easier, psychologically and mentally, to just assume the system will somehow work everything out and come to the right decision.

And we are reluctant to see how new information could alter the probabilities that the correct decision was made, unless that new information is overwhelming.

Let me try to illustrate this a little bit using mathematics. Suppose we use a 97 percent probability cut-off rate for deciding whether to convict a suspect of murder. And they are convicted. If new information emerges after the conviction that later brings the percent down to 96 percent, then the conviction should be overturned. That would be the logical thing to do. If you would not have convicted them with that information during the trial, then you should not keep them in prison if that information emerges after the trial either.
But that is not how the current system works.
#15084376
There is a college prof that has his class get a guy off death row every year. If he had the time and manpower, he could do that all year.

There is a lot of really crappy work done in the justice system. Actually, it needs top to bottom reform, it's a mess.

Btw, good argument against allowing a death penalty.
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