Regardless Of The Evidence

10 January 2014

Bias has ‘significant’ effect on verdicts, jury research says

"Jurors should be tested before trials to reduce the effect of prejudices on their understanding of the burden of proof, according to the authors of a study suggesting bias has a ‘significant’ impact on verdicts.

A study, published in the British Psychological Society’s Legal and Criminological Psychology journal, found that pre-trial bias and jurors' understanding of the concept of beyond reasonable doubt have a ‘significant’ impact on the verdict they are likely to deliver in court.

Researchers from Anglia Ruskin University, University of Cambridge and University of Manchester sampled a group of 118 people aged between 19-63 employed by a pharmaceutical company in Cambridge.

Participants were asked to imagine they were serving on a jury in a ficticious burglary trial. They were given details of the charge, the prosecution and defence cases and the judge's instructions on the presumption of innocence.

Looking at the criminal standard of proof to convict - beyond reasonable doubt - the study found that the average threshold required to find someone guilty was a probability of 95%.

It also found that pre-trial attitudes combined with interpretations of beyond reasonable doubt accounted for 37% of the variability in the verdicts, so are an important predictor of how a juror will decide, regardless of the evidence."

http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/practice/bias-has-significant-effect-on-verdicts-jury-research-says/5039295.article

A Terrible Soap Opera

3:27 PM, 10 September 2013

Coronation Street star Michael Le Vell cleared of all sexual abuse charges

"A jury at Manchester Crown Court acquitted the star who played the soap's garage mechanic Kevin Webster for 30 years.

Coronation Street star Michael Le Vell cleared of all sexual abuse charges.

Coronation Street actor Michael Le Vell has been found not guilty of rape and sexual assault.

The jury in his sex abuse trial at Manchester Crown Court cleared the actor of all charges brought against him.

Speaking outside the court, Le Vell told reporters he was "delighted" at the verdict and thanked his family and friends for their support during the trial."

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-10/coronation-street-star-michael-le-vell-cleared-of-all-sexual-abuse-charges

Michael Le Vell not guilty

http://www.itv.com/news/story/2013-09-10/michael-le-vell-not-guilty

Le Vell Stripped Of Celebrity Status In Court

http://news.sky.com/story/1139838/le-vell-stripped-of-celebrity-status-in-court

My friend Michael Le Vell's hell is at an end and life can return to some sense of normality

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/michael-le-vell-nigel-pivaro-2265297?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Michael Le Vell trial nothing short of tragedy and Coronation Street actor is the victim

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/michael-le-vell-trial-nothing-2265494

After Michael Le Vell trial:After Michael Le Vell trial: Should law let sex case suspects remain anonymous?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/after-michael-le-vell-trial-2265628

Michael Le Vell 'celebrity witch-hunt' suggestion denied

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24048732

A look at the Michael Turner case (aka as Michael Le Vell - aka soap star name Kevin Webster)

http://obiterj.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/a-look-at-michael-turner-case-aka-as.html?spref=tw

Michael Le Vell was preyed on by the system

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/michael-le-vell-preyed-system-2267690

Michael le Vell to meet Coronation Street bosses today to discuss Kevin Webster return

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/michael-le-vell-coronation-street-2267947

There is no great stigma attached to being a rapist

http://www.newstatesman.com/glosswitch/2013/09/there-no-great-stigma-attached-being-rapist

The McCarthy-ist agenda of the anti-paedophile crusade

http://www.nouse.co.uk/2013/09/13/the-mccarthy-ist-agenda-of-the-anti-paedophile-crusade

The trial of Michael Le Vell: Salem comes to Britain

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/14021#.UjmLuH9MCKI

Within The Law

PUBLISHED: 17:23, 29 July 2013 | UPDATED: 17:45, 29 July 2013

Child sex case juror who wrote on Facebook that he was going to 'f*** up a paedophile' is jailed for contempt of court

">Kasim Davey, 21, of London said there was 'lots of Savile news at the time'
>He wrote the message because of 'spontaneous surprise at case I was on'
>Joseph Beard, 29, also jailed for two months at High Court for contempt
>He used internet to research case he was sitting on as a juror in Surrey
>Both prosecutions were brought by Attorney General Dominic Grieve"

"Davey had posted: ‘Woooow (sic), I wasn't expecting to be in a jury deciding a paedophile's fate - I've always wanted to f*** up a paedophile and now I'm within the law!’"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380890/Child-sex-case-juror-Kasim-Davey-wrote-Facebook-going-f--paedophile.html

Fallacious?

Published: 10 hrs ago

Jeopardy law rapist gets life

"Coward ... rapist WB

A MAN who raped an OAP 16 years ago was jailed for life yesterday — after the double jeopardy law was overturned.

WB, 56, beat and raped a mum of one, 66, in her home in Stratford, East London, in 1997.

He was cleared in 1999 after a judge ruled DNA evidence against him could not be used against him.

Back then, a person could not be tried a second time for the same crime and builder B thought he had got away with it.

But changes to the law in 2005, to allow those cleared of a serious offence to be put on trial for the crime again, meant B could be retried for the rape.

Jurors at London’s Old Bailey were told a one-in-a-billion DNA match linked the grandfather of six, of Walthamstow, to the attack.

Coward B refused to come up from the cells to be sentenced.

Ordering he serve a minimum 10½years, Judge Peter Rook said he had committed a crime of “extreme violence and depravity”.

B beat his victim so badly she was unrecognisable. She died in 2002. Her family said: “She never got over it.”"

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4989218/Jeopardy-law-rapist-gets-life-in-prison-after-being-originally-cleared-in-1999.html

*****

Prosecutor's fallacy

"The prosecutor's fallacy is a fallacy of statistical reasoning, typically used by the prosecution to argue for the guilt of a defendant during a criminal trial. Although it is named after prosecutors it is not specific to them, and some variants of the fallacy can be utilized by defence lawyers arguing for the innocence of their client.

At its heart the fallacy involves assuming that the prior probability of a random match is equal to the probability that the defendant is innocent.

For instance, if a perpetrator is known to have the same blood type as a defendant and 10% of the population share that blood type; then to argue on that basis alone that the probability of the defendant being guilty is 90% makes the prosecutors's fallacy, in a very simple form.

The terms "prosecutor's fallacy" and "defense attorney's fallacy" were originated by William C. Thompson and Edward Schumann in the 1987 article Interpretation of Statistical Evidence in Criminal Trials, subtitled The Prosecutor's Fallacy and the Defense Attorney's Fallacy.

The fallacy can arise from multiple testing, such as when evidence is compared against a large database. The size of the database elevates the likelihood of finding a match by pure chance alone; i.e., DNA evidence is soundest when a match is found after a single directed comparison because the existence of matches against a large database where the test sample is of poor quality may be less unlikely by mere chance.

The basic fallacy results from misunderstanding conditional probability and neglecting the prior odds of a defendant being guilty before that evidence was introduced.

When a prosecutor has collected some evidence (for instance a DNA match) and has an expert testify that the probability of finding this evidence if the accused were innocent is tiny, the fallacy occurs if it is concluded that the probability of the accused being innocent must be comparably tiny.

If the DNA match is used to confirm guilt which is otherwise suspected then it is indeed strong evidence. However if the DNA evidence is the sole evidence against the accused and the accused was picked out of a large database of DNA profiles, the odds of the match being made at random may be reduced, and less damaging to the defendant.

The odds in this scenario do not relate to the odds of being guilty, they relate to the odds of being picked at random."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor's_fallacy

The Prosecutor’s Fallacy

http://buchanan.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/the-prosecutors-fallacy/?_r=0

You Say Judges, Too?

Thursday 21 February 2013 20.00 GMT

Juries? It's time they went the way of the ducking stool

"The soap opera that is the Vicky Pryce trial shows the archaic rituals of our courts to be little more than legal parlour games.

British lawyers and judges. 'Barristers love juries because it beats office work and they get to dress up.'

Can we declare the emperor naked at last? Is it possible that the exasperation of Mr Justice Sweeney with the Vicky Pryce jury might take us where home secretaries, human dignity, common sense and the 21st century have together not dared to tread?

Some aspects of the British way of life are immune to reason. If you want a cheap cheer on Any Questions?, refer reverentially to the Queen, the NHS, our brave boys at the front or trial by jury. The audience goes berserk. No criticism of these institutions is allowed.

Trial by jury is a hangover from days when England was ruled by manorial courts and vestrymen, by impressed constables, "pricked militias" and compulsory dog-catching was the order of the day. Juries were an advance on lynching and trial by combat, ordeal and torture, but only just. Mark Twain thought them "the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice that human wisdom could have devised" – although he failed to mention the revenue they bring lawyers."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/21/juries-time-ducking-stool