Comments on: More on Bennett’s Chainsaw

By: Mark Bennett

Mark Bennett — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:01:00 +0000

Shannon gets extra credit for the Princess Bride reference, by the way.

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:41:00 +0000

nevermind

By: Gideon

Gideon — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 01:37:00 +0000

Huh?

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:29:00 +0000

or he’s vincent bugliosi, man among boys

By: Mark Bennett

Mark Bennett — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:06:00 +0000

Colin was the first to get it right. The second-simplest explanation for the government’s admissible evidence is (generally) best because the simplest evidence for the government’s admissible evidence is guilt. After all, they get to choose their evidence.

There are cases in which the simplest explanation for the government’s admissible evidence is innocence. In those cases, which are by no means uncommon, the prosecutor has screwed up.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:41:00 +0000

this assumes that the prosecution is actually playing the simplest explanation. what if the prosecutor’s actually playing a weird circumstantial conspiracy type case?

By: AJG

AJG — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:46:00 +0000

I concur with saxon-cory. The simplest explanation is the one already being proffered for the admission of the evidence. Thus, the second-simplest is the one that makes that evidence work for the defense. Hence, the second-simplest explanation is the explanation that corresponds with Bennett’s Chainsaw but does not correspond with the prosecution’s case.

By: Saxon_Cori

Saxon_Cori — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:09:00 +0000

Clearly, the simplest explanation that includes all of the admissible evidence is the one that the prosecutor is pushing forward with all her publicity seeking fervor already. After all, why would police and prosecutors look for, gather, or credit evidence that did not support the conclusion they had come to in advance?

By: Matlock

Matlock — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:45:00 +0000

I always ask jury panels “When you came in here and saw my client, how many of you asked ‘I wonder what he did?’” The reason for that is because my client is sitting there in front of the jury with the spotlight of the government’s accusation upon them. Innocent until proven guilty is good in theory, but every juror that sits in a trial is looking at the defendant and listening to evidence through the filter of looking at my client and wondering if he really did it.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:26:00 +0000

What is this? The jackie chiles school of defense law? Confuse and mystify the jury until they are hypnotized into believing that you actually put on an amazing case?