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5 years or so ago I was on a jury once concerning sexual misconduct, and spent a good hour or so in the deliberation scanning the submitted call records, lookin
by stepvhen 10y ago
5 years or so ago I was on a jury once concerning sexual misconduct, and spent a good hour or so in the deliberation scanning the submitted call records, looking for gaps in correspondence between the two relevant phone numbers. It was pretty easy to identify moments when the two parties were together, that's when they stopped texting, and checked they that matched up with all of the testimonies. They did, and it solidified a guilty verdict with my fellow jurors (sans one, on one count, but we had 7 already).
- zepto 10y agoDo you know the probability that this correspondence happened by chance?
- stepvhen 10y agoI was convinced beyond reasonable doubt, having phone records that matched rather well with testimonies. I also might have fixated on it and ignored chance, but that's why there are 12 jurors.
- jstanley 10y agoIf someone on HN ignores the statistics, what are the chances that the other jurors paid any attention to statistics?
- stonecraftwolf 10y agoReasonable doubt is not defined in terms of statistical confidence.
- nitrogen 10y agoMaybe it should be.
- abritinthebay 10y agoBased on most of the posts here I'd say "someone on HN" is just as likely - if not more, due to misplaced confidence - to ignore statistics.
- lucb1e 10y agoOr all humans fall victim to largely the same kinds of fallacies. That's why there is no jury in all countries that I know of except America. I'm not sure if a jury is a bad idea, when I first learned of it, I kinda liked the idea, but I'm worried about this kind of reasoning...
- piptastic 10y agoWhat do other countries do? Is the decision made by one person that has these same fallacies? At least the risk is spread out some in the jury situation.
- burkaman 10y agoOther countries definitely use juries, just not as universally as the US. They more often just have a judge or a panel of judges, or sometimes a sort of jury that includes judges.
- antris 10y agoProper training alleviates these fallacies. I trust a judge much better than a jury of random people.
- yompers888 10y agoOn the other hand, the random jury doesn't have the same perverse incentives and web of relationships that support conviction.
- r00fus 10y agoWould you still trust that judge that was elected to office with lobbyist money?
- burkaman 10y agoI think electing judges might also be a uniquely American thing, and less than half the country does it. It's a much weirder practice than using juries. Obviously you can still say a judge was appointed by people elected with lobbyist money, but it's not that direct.
- zepto 10y agoDid any of the other jurors calculate the probability of the result being by chance?
- danso 10y agoI wonder if the defense attorney brought in a statician to argue that?
- jacquesm 10y agoThat hinges strongly on the meaning of the word 'all' in your comment, if all is < 5 then that's not a very strong argument at all, if all is > 100 then it probably is (but it would still need analysis of a much larger volume of calls of pairs of phones to determine how often that situation would occur due to chance).
- stepvhen 10y agoI should mention that it wasn't the only piece of evidence we looked over. We deliberated for around 6 hours I believe. Forgive me if I wasn't clear; I didn't intend to make it seem like I was the lone seeker of truth and made a grand argument to my peers; there was a lot discussed, by everybody. Also keep in mind that when you're on a jury, you only have so much to go on, and few resources with which to analyze. Thats why the phrasing is "beyond reasonable doubt."
- ifdefdebug 10y agoI think if "only so much" is too little, and "few resources" are not enough, then you have no means to reach "beyond reasonable doubt", and you should say so.
- dTal 10y agoIt's off-topic, but I'm deathly curious - what kind of sexual misconduct is so serious that two people consensually meeting warrants a jury trial, complete with subpoenaed phone logs? I suppose if one of them were underage...
- privong 10y ago> what kind of sexual misconduct is so serious that two people consensually meeting warrants a jury trial, complete with subpoenaed phone logs? Their meeting up may have been consensual, but what happened while they were together might not have been. Also, the parent doesn't say both parties wanted to meet up. So, the meeting-up could have not been consensual. It could have been a stalking situation or maybe they just happened to run into each other by chance.
- stepvhen 10y agoBoth parties were consenting, but one was underage at the time of the incident(s). The mother was the one who pressed charges, if I recall correctly.
- Lawtonfogle 10y agoOdd that the phone records were needed. If I thought the victim was telling the truth about beimg abused then the records wouldn't matter and if I had reason to doubt them then I don't see matching phone records satisfying the doubt.
- tsunamifury 10y agoWhat a tragedy of justice that you used an absence of evidence as a deciding factor. There is so much logically wrong with that, even in correlation.
- Terr_ 10y agoSuppose somebody's alibi is "I was driving between these two cities at the time, and then I spent the night working." But their car-odometer didn't change, and their home-electricity usage dropped to zero that day. Both of those observations are surely "evidence". Similarly, a digital signal still carries information, even though the zeroes are an "absence" of voltage.
- tsunamifury 10y agoThats a lot different from "you weren't talking to someone, so you must have been doing X" Whereas in real life X could = anything.
- woodman 10y agoThe logic isn't even close: Odometers increment on driven cars. The odometer did not increment. The car was driven. Unsatisfied. People having sex are together. People who are together don't text each other. During a certain hour a person didn't text 68 contacts. At this certain hour, this certain person had sex with 68 people. Satisfiable.
- stepvhen 10y agoIt's more like: these two numbers are in constant contact all other hours of the day. At this hour midday, when others, including one of the relevant parties, say those two numbers are together, there is no correspondence. Later, the correspondence picks up as before.
- ifdefdebug 10y agoI see your point of high probability they might have been together. But I don't see evidence for "sexual misconduct" during the time they were together. They could have just talked. Anyway, the whole charge is disgusting. Leave them alone dammit.