tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83319443934780455992024-02-20T05:48:01.187-08:00Northeast by SouthwestLackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-40090674427268831372013-01-26T12:14:00.002-08:002013-01-26T12:15:57.543-08:00I will run marathons, but probably never the Boston Marathon.Today, I ran 22 miles as part of my training for the February 17 Livestrong Austin Marathon. For the first time, I felt certain I could have completed the full marathon distance. Elated, I contemplated running in future marathons, which has always been the intent, provided this first one isn't overly brutal. My wife asked me if I wanted to ever try Boston. I decided to check the required qualifying times.<br />
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Not happening. Today, I ran 22 miles in a few minutes over the time I would have needed to qualify for Boston. I might get faster eventually, I guess--but I'd basically have to run a full marathon like I currently run a 5k, at a pace of about a 7:03 minute mile. Sometimes, I suppose it's good to recognize one's limitations. <br />
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<a href="http://www.sub3marathoner.com/boston1.html">http://www.sub3marathoner.com/boston1.html</a>Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-73594638208676326782012-12-15T06:57:00.001-08:002012-12-15T09:12:52.447-08:00Guns Kill PeopleI try to stay away from political subjects. I find that, when discussing politics, people tend to reduce complex issues into narrow soundbites, and quickly become angry. I prefer to avoid the subject all together, to avoid discord. (I'm a lawyer who dislikes conflict--I know how strange that sounds). I also tend to think that people overestimate the degree to which politics impacts one's everyday life.<br />
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Still, I feel compelled to collect my thoughts around one narrow part of the tragic school shooting in Connecticut. (I can barely stand to refer to the events in all but the most oblique terms). Various individuals--pundits, and social media users--immediately began to incorporate political arguments into discussion of the tragedy. Gun control and religion in schools seemed the two most popular angles. Some handled this better than others.<br />
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My initial impulse was to scream, "shut up and mourn!" However, I retreated from this view. Politics are important, despite the extent to which they are debased by pundits and practitioners. Many political issues may not truly matter, but some do. And, here, I think, we have a situation in which real policies (i.e., meaningful gun control) might have prevented a tragedy. I do not, ultimately, think it is disrespectful to the victims or the tragedy itself to examine how such tragedies may be prevented in the future. One might even argue that earnest efforts to prevent future tragedies gives their deaths some measure of meaning, while ignoring difficult questions about causation and prevention only renders their deaths more senseless. (I say "one might even argue" because, to me, the murder of kindergartners is so horrific as to remove it from platitudes about "meaning.").<br />
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My own feelings about gun control are pragmatic. I have no moral beliefs either way. A gun is a tool that people use to enhance their coercive force. Coercion is necessary in both the public and private spheres, however much an idealistic pacifist may wish otherwise. A gun can be a force for justice in the hands of someone trying to protect his or her family, or a force for evil in the hands of a different individual, such as Adam Lanza. The gun does, however, increase the destructive capabilities of anyone who takes the gun in hand. In the end, I put my faith in probability and statistics. If reducing access to guns (moderately to severely) would, ultimately, save lives, then I favor strict gun control. If more people are saved by the deterrent of owning a gun, then I think more law-abiding citizens should buy one. I'm not here to debate the statistics, at the moment.<br />
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That brings me to an anti-gun control argument--more a talisman or motto, though people take it seriously--that is bereft of logical or persuasive force. Yet, despite its intellectual bankruptcy, the argument is advanced by fairly reasonable people on a regular basis: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." Garbage.<br />
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Let's first look at this argument from a strictly causative perspective. The argument is false. When a perpetrator murders a victim using a gun, both the gun (and the bullet) are causative agents, as well as the perpetrator who pulled the trigger. But-for the gun, and the bullet, the victim would still be alive.<br />
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Now, a more sophisticated anti-gun control advocate might suggest that the perpetrator might find another tool. That might be true. Still, in the strict sense, we're talking about a counterfactual. The perpetrator did not use some other weapon. The perpetrator chose a gun. Thus, you can't dissociate the gun from the murder when arguing causality<br />
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Next, to wrap up the other major defense of the "guns-don't-kill-people" mantra, we come to volition. I would agree with this position in the limited sense that a gun is not morally blameworthy. But, then, neither are all sorts of items that we do not hesitate to ban (crack cocaine isn't morally blameworthy for ruining the lives of those who abuse it, either). However, acknowledging that a gun is not morally blameworthy just begs the question: can one separate the object of the perpetrator (the murder) from the modality of the murder (the gun)?<br />
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Perpetrators choose guns for an obvious reason. Adam Lanza, specifically, didn't bring a samurai sword (or a bow, club, or knife) to that elementary school. He chose a gun. Adam Lanza had a reason for wanting a gun to accomplish his vile purpose: guns are more effective weapons and make killing easier and faster. And, he didn't stop with just any old gun. No, he (legally) procured an assault rifle, knowing that its capacity for mass killing outstripped that of an ordinary gun. In fact, guns are used in more than 60% of all homicides, demonstrating empirically that guns are the preferred choice of murderers in the United States. (http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-violence/welcome.htm).<br />
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I'm sure that, in some undetermined percentage of gun-caused homicides, the perpetrator wanted badly enough to kill his victim that the attainability of a gun was ultimately inconsequential. The perpetrator would have killed using a different tool. I'm also sure that, at other times, the availability of the gun is a but-for cause of the death or, in a mass-murder, some of the deaths. (The reasons are obvious: it's easier to escape or disarm an individual using a less potent weapon; guns make violence easier). Again, I'm a pragmatist, and I don't pretend to know definitively how many murders making guns harder to obtain would prevent. My objection here is simply the bad argument that so many people seem to embrace.<br />
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Guns kill people. A gun is a causative agent of death in the strict sense that the bullet fired from the gun results in a victim's death. More broadly, a gun can be a but-for cause of the death because not all gun-caused murders would occur if guns were more difficult to obtain. Twenty kindergartners died, yesterday, after being shot by a person wielding a gun. I think it's time to dispense with hollow, illogical assertions that have value only as soundbites.<br />
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Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-35344844587580519072012-07-03T18:23:00.002-07:002012-07-04T16:17:54.837-07:00Championships are a form of measurementA mighty cheer was heard across the nation (especially via Twitter!) these last two weeks as a college football playoff has been planned. I think people are actually more collectively pleased by the end of the BCS than the implementation of a playoff--but that's human nature for you. <br />
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Personally, I'm agnostic about the entire thing, despite the fact that one of my two teams (Texas) would have benefited from a playoff in 2008. (Of course, Texas would have had to play an additional game in 2005--but Vince Young sneers at the notion that any other team would have taken home the hardware that year). Some years, there is a clear-cut #1 and #2 team. Other years, not so much. <br />
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What I ultimately reject is the idea that any playoff system is designed to crown the "best" team as champion. the champion is the team that the rules of a tournament deem to have won the games that matter most according to the rules of the tournament. That doesn't mean the team is the best. <br />
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To take an extreme example, nobody would seriously contend that the Cup champion of a European soccer association is, in fact, the best team in the country. Liverpool won the FA Cup this year in England (the FA cup is England's highest rated knockout tournament). Liverpool, however, finished in 8th--an astounding 37 points behind Manchester City and Manchester United. Both Manchester City and Manchester United had records of 28/5/5. Liverpool went 14/10/14. Forgetting Liverpool for a moment, teams from lower divisions of English soccer (such as Millwall a few years back) have actually made the final and (in the more distant past) eight such teams have even won the cup. <br />
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In England, the Premier League Champion is considered the best team in the land. The FA Cup seems generally considered to measure something quite different, such as the ability to rise to the occasion. It captures magic, not excellence. Manchester City were the best team in England; Liverpool caught lightning in a bottle.<br />
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Today, Andy Staples--a writer I generally admire--engaged fans on Twitter, ultimately defended the playoff method of crowning champions, suggesting that the Giants (a 9-7 team) were worth champions because they "beat the best teams when it mattered most."<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/Andy_Staples/statuses/220250200197955585"></a><br />
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With respect, that's a tautology and, therefore, basically worthless. Any team that wins according to the rules prescribed by that competition will be the legitimate winner, no matter how absurd those rules happen to be. Nobody claims that the Giants did not deservedly win the Super Bowl. The question is, rather, whether the fact that the Giants won the Super Bowl really proves they're the best team. Although we like to think that the better team wins when it matters most, that's simply not true. We acknowledge this "error rate"--if that's what we want to call it--by having multiple-game series in sports like basketball and baseball. Could you imagine a World Series being decided by a one game playoff? In a sport where all but the worst teams win 70 games a year? One might as well throw dice. In football, the best teams do tend to win more often, but Vegas will tell you that even a severe underdog generally has a reasonably decent percentage chance of victory. The odds of "the best" true talent team winning 3 or 4 football games in a row (and thus the Super Bowl) are considerably less than 50%. The Super Bowl champion, then, is *usually* not the best team in the sport.<br />
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Championships are determined by rules that attempt, crudely, to measure excellence. Any playoff format in a single-elimination tournament is going to serve as a very crude instrument to measure that excellence. I understand that we can't really have, say, a European soccer league table to determine the winner because the 100+ college football teams don't all play each other home and away. But, there's something to be said for the notion that the worth of a team is better revealed by how it performs all season than in a playoff tacked on at the end.<br />
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{roponents of the playoff are confusing accuracy (of "correctly" selecting the best team) with legitimacy (having a system that we feel is fair). The advantage of the playoff system over the BCS is not that it more often selects the "best" team--in fact, I suspect the opposite might be true. Rather, the advantage is that we feel it is more likely to give a shot to teams that otherwise might not have an equal opportunity to compete. The result of a single game might be random, but it is not unfair. <br />
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Ultimately, I think that being clear about just what we want out of our champions would improve the discussion. Do we want to select the "best" team? Or do we want the most "fair" process? Championships are tautologies. Any competition provides its own criteria for greatness. Let's be honest, however, about what we're measuring.Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-49093854151003639312012-03-25T18:16:00.005-07:002012-03-25T18:26:14.721-07:00Half-Marathon - CompleteI finished a half-marathon today: the Dallas Rock n'Roll. For any interested, it was smoothly run, albeit crowded, as I imagine any of the Rock'n'Roll events are. Public transport to and from the event via the DART functioned surprisingly well. Time was 1:56:27.<br /><br />I knew my heart, lungs, and muscles would be fine--but I had serious concerns about my knees. They've been prohibitively painful after just 4 miles, lately. I'd strengthened them to withstand about 10 miles, before my soccer-related quad injury, which led to a total reboot of the knee pain. Thirty-one feels older some days than others.<br /><br />In any event, I took Ibuprofen before the race (I generally do not use it), and the knee pain was never more than an annoyance. I actually progressively quickened my pace throughout the race. By about mile 10, when I felt confident that my knees wouldn't betray me, I actually sped up to about a 7:30 minute mile. The last mile I ran at 7:00. <br /><br />I still remember struggling to run 2.5 miles--after regular practice--ten years ago. I was much younger, then. I remain curious as to why my running ability has improved so drastically later in life. I quit running at about 24, then resumed at 27--with much improved results. Yet, my joints are more painful, now--and if I kick a soccer ball without warming up, I strain my quads. In most ways, I'm in much better shape. I weigh less, I can run farther, I have better muscle tone. But, part of me wishes I'd had a peak period where I'd taken advantage of my youth.Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-17629359355313645222012-02-15T11:04:00.000-08:002012-02-15T11:17:10.757-08:00The Difference Between Cats and DogsThis January, we adopted a new dog, who my children--literalists--named Patches. Patches is my first dog since my only previous dog (Spot--I was once a literalist) was hit by a car when I was 7 years old. In the intervening span, I've had half a dozen cats. I've long considered myself a cat person, for the stereotypical reasons.<br /><br />Having Patches has reacquainted me with all the reasons why I am a cat person. I actually do like her, and am glad we adopted her, but I'm finding confirmation that I am suited for cats by disposition. An incident that occurred about 5 minutes ago nicely illustrates the point:<br /><br />I plan to make buttermilk-marinated fried pork chops tonight. This, of course, required me to pour the buttermilk (and cayenne, garlic, and cumin) in a gallon bag along with the pork chops. I had just placed said ingredients in the ziplock bag, when I turned to return the buttermilk bottle to the refrigerator. In this instant, Patches managed to jump up, head on the counter, grab the bag in her teeth, and fling it to the ground, presumably so she could devour the chops. Of course, the buttermilk/cayenne mixture splattered everywhere. I turned around, eyes blazing, and patches instantly went down to a sitting position and started whining. Then she headed to the door, prepared to be cast outside while I cleaned up the mess.<br /><br />My cat, Zarathustra (or another cat), would never do this. A cat may or may not like people food. But, even if it does, cats seem to engage in strategic reasoning. A cat would first assay the scene. He would triangulate the positions of the desired food object; me; and his own location. He would then measure my preoccupation with other tasks. Then he would calculate the risk of being caught redhanded, weigh that against the possible reward, and finally conclude that, in this instance, the risks of apprehension and punishment were vastly greater than the possible benefits. He would then role over and sun himself in the window, perhaps taking a nap, and dream of an alternate universe in which I served pork chops in his golden bowl.<br /><br />Of course, if the cat were wrong in his strategic assessment, he would never apologize, unlike the dog. Rather, he would strut away primly, as if to say: foolish human, why did you place those pork chops directly in my path? If I attempted to apprehend him, he would quickly (but in a dignified manner) jump to the highest shelf, and look smugly down at me.<br /><br />Again, I'm a cat person. I'll take a little condescension over buttermilk-splattered floors any day.Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-7248834778131721172011-12-19T17:43:00.000-08:002011-12-19T18:26:49.505-08:00Kim Jong Il - a brief reflectionI've given serious thought to Kim Jong Il during two phases of my life. First, during high school and college CX debate. You could construct disadvantages with consequences involving nuclear war very easily by invoking the specter of North Korea. And, as every good high school debater knows, nuclear war is the inexorable outcome of virtually any policy resolution.<br /><br />My second encounter with Kim Jong Il, however, changed the way I thought about the world. I had a U.S.-China foreign relations course in which the professor, Robert Ross, was dedicated toward debunking narratives. Two matters still resonate very strongly. The first involved Professor Ross's observation the week of 9/11: "Terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Cruise missiles are the weapons of the strong. Radical Islamists don't have cruise missiles, so they fly planes into towers. That doesn't diminish the personal tragedy of the victims." That didn't entirely sink in at the moment.<br /><br />Given the subject of the course, our class examined the impact of North Korea on Chinese-U.S. relations in a more routine manner. Professor Ross didn't like calling Kim Jong Il crazy, and he was rather contemptuous of those who did. He scorned political scientists and politicians who fancied themselves capable of divining the mental-state of a human being based on foreign policy. Kim Jong Il engaged in high-risk brinksmanship. Those risks paid off, in the sense that his regime was comparatively stable and he had survived in an era when most dictators had fallen. Sure, the US could crush him. China could crush him. But, neither had--because Kim Jong Il cannily converted his apparent "craziness" into leverage when, by rights, he should have very little. What others labeled "crazy" could very easily be viewed as "rational." Again, Professor Ross thought Kim Jong Il a tyrant. He didn't approve of his brutality or disregard for the welfare of his people. But, he detested the easy narrative that our enemy was a lunatic incapable of acting in his own self interest.<br /><br />I was largely persuaded at the time. Over the years, however, Professor Ross's teachings have reverberated in my mind when I've considered all sorts of issues. Strip away the narrative. Who benefits from an action? Who loses out? Those questions explain far more of human behavior than most of us would believe. Or, as Curt Schilling more pithily put it, "Aura and mystique...those are dancers at a night club."<br /><br />I don't know if Kim Jong Il was a madman. Certainly, he was a wretched human being, who lived a life of unimaginable luxury while his people starved. But, in my life, Kim Jong Il was a lesson that profoundly altered the window through which I view the world.Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-6659864655562929682011-10-10T18:25:00.000-07:002011-10-10T18:40:54.455-07:00ESPN Exercises First Amendment RightsHank Williams, Jr., recently lost out in the marketplace of ideas, at least as far as his employment/royalties are concerned. He, however, feels that his First Amendment right to free speech was trampled. For those who remain blissfully ignorant: Hank compared Obama to Hitler. He was then astonished when ESPN decided to stop playing his Monday Night Football theme song.<div><br /></div><div><a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-06/entertainment/showbiz_williams-football_1_hank-williams-holocaust-survivor-abc-and-espn?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ">http://articles.cnn.com/2011-10-06/entertainment/showbiz_williams-football_1_hank-williams-holocaust-survivor-abc-and-espn?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ</a></div><div><br /></div><div>I know I'm not the first to make this point, but this common misperception of the First Amendment irks me enough that I don't care:</div><div><br /></div><div>A PRIVATE INDIVIDUAL SUCH AS A CORPORATION CANNOT VIOLATE YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS ABSENT NEAR-BIZARRE CIRCUMSTANCES.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thank you for excusing the caps lock. There's a fabulous quote from Larry Tribe: "There are two ways, and two ways only, in which an ordinary private citizen, acting under her own steam and under color of no law, can violate the United States Constitution. One is to enslave somebody . . . . The other is to bring a bottle of beer, wine, or bourbon into a State in violation of its beverage control laws.” Lawrence H. Tribe, How To Violate the Constitution Without Really Trying, 12 Const. Commentary 217, 220 (1995).</div><div><br /></div><div>No, Hank, ESPN didn't violate your First Amendment rights. Ironically, ESPN merely exercised its own free speech rights. I'm so very sorry that ESPN's voice (pocket, really, but whatever) is louder than yours.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-16565243002534991532011-07-27T16:41:00.000-07:002011-07-27T17:12:50.070-07:00Baseball Stats on TV - Fielding Percentage Is A Terrible Stat<div>I love advanced baseball statistics. I'll admit that at the outset. I recognize, however, that TV networks do not have some sort of duty to educate casual, traditional fans regarding the virtues of advanced statistics. As much as networks get blamed for perpetuating myths regarding the value of, say, pitcher wins, you can't blame them too much for providing their audience with the information it wants.</div><div><br /></div>The only statistic provided by most networks regarding a baseball team's defense is fielding percentage. <div><br /></div><div>Virtually anybody who follows baseball closely knows that fielding percentage is a terrible statistic. It measures nothing more than the percentage of plays in which a team (or player) makes an out rather than an error. The stat tells very little about a player's defensive ability, other than that the player doesn't make a ton of obvious mistakes. It doesn't tell you how often the player does the spectacular. It doesn't penalize sloth-like players who can't ever reach relatively easy fly balls--but don't bungle the catch when they actually make it in time. It doesn't punish players who take terrible defensive positions. It doesn't reflect the situations where players decide they'd rather not make a drive or crash into the wall in chasing after a ball. Whether a given play is a "hit" or an "error" is an arbitrary judgment that varies tremendously depending on the official scorer. Willy Mays turned a lot hits into outs. Manny Ramirez, on the other hand, raised a lot of batting averages even when he didn't commit errors. </div><div><br /></div><div>Fielding percentage is quite obviously a terrible way to measure defensive performance. But, you ask, what are the alternatives? After all, most advanced stats (like plus/minus or UZR) are pretty controversial and depend on all sorts of measurements that casual fans don't see.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is, however, a better stat that is easy to understand. Frankly, I'm very puzzled that it hasn't been adopted already. That is<i> </i><b>defensive efficiency</b>. Defensive efficiency is just the percentage of the time that a fielder turns a ball in play into an out. When calculating defensive efficiency, we don't ask whether a defender <i>should</i> have made a play. We just ask whether he <i>did</i>. Now, on any given play, defensive efficiency might not tell you much. No defender is going to catch a screaming line drive to the gap. But, over time, defensive efficiency is a much better stat than fielding percentage because it covers more things that we want to know about how well a person defends his position. Players get credit for making players that they "shouldn't"; they also get punished for not making plays that don't involve obvious screw-ups but that most defenders would make. </div><div><br /></div><div>Defensive efficiency is easy to understand and vastly superior to fielding percentage. So, why don't we use it more? Your guess is as good as mine. </div>Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8331944393478045599.post-24901313929584302292011-07-06T19:09:00.000-07:002011-07-06T19:32:27.073-07:00The Casey Anthony VerdictI did not follow the Casey Anthony trial intensely. But, I was massively annoyed by the overreaction to the verdict.<div><br /></div><div>First, I'm generally curious when the public, at large, chooses to assume that the jury in any particular case gets a result massively wrong. Don't get me wrong, juries *are* sometimes wrong. Innocent people are convicted, and guilty people are acquitted. But, the jury generally has more information than Joe Public. Jurors are forced to endure trials, hear all the evidence, listen to the arguments, and receive instruction from the judge. Even ardent followers of trials generally hear less of the evidence. When a jury unanimously reaches a conclusion, people should take that verdict seriously. Except in unusual circumstances (like suppressed evidence), it is not reasonable to assume that a group of 12 individuals was stupid, biased, or otherwise irrational. It's extremely egotistic to assume that you, with less information, can arrive at a more sound conclusion than a jury.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Second, I had no objections to the verdict. In fact, it mirrored my own intuition: that Casey Anthony was probably guilty but that the prosecution hadn't proven its case.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Reasonable doubt is a very high standard of proof. The standard in civil cases is a "preponderance, i.e. "more likely than not" or 51%." Beyond that, there's "clear and convincing." I've always taken that to mean about 66%.</div><div><br /></div><div>Judges are reluctant to quantify "beyond a reasonable doubt" to a particular percentage. It's far more than preponderance but less than "beyond a shadow of a doubt." The common definitions I've heard in court are "moral certainty" and "a certainty that you would rely on in your most important, personal affairs." Both definitions are, frankly, quite bad. The meaning of "moral certainty" is neither obvious nor intuitive. The level of proof that one would rely upon in their personal affairs is positively misleading. For example, I wouldn't trust someone who I thought even 2% likely to have abused a child to babysit my kids. On the other hand, I wouldn't bet my mortgage on even a 98% chance. Whatever. Personally, for me, beyond a reasonable doubt means around a 93% chance. Yes, that's arbitrary--but so are all the other definitions. </div><div><br /></div><div>Popular culture goes into two different, and wrong, directions regarding reasonable doubt. First, people equate acquittals with innocence. I cringe when I hear people say that OJ was found "innocent" by a jury of his peers. He was not. He was acquitted under the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. In the subsequent civil case, he was convicted under the "preponderance" standard. So, in truth, juries collectively determined that OJ probably did it, but not a very high level of confidence.</div><div><br /></div><div>The "not guilty" verdict doesn't mean Casey Anthony was innocent. That verdict doesn't even mean the jury thought she was innocent. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you don't like it, moreover, you can do something about it! People behave as if "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is a standard engraved in the stars. It's not. The "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard is a policy choice, reflecting the fact that our Founding Fathers would rather set a guilty person free than send an innocent person to prison. But, we don't have to agree with our founding fathers. We're free to craft our own standards. Granted, the "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is mandated by the Constitution's due process clause according to the Supreme Court. But, guess what? We can change the Constitution.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's one proposal: create two different verdicts. If the jury thinks it's 51% likely that a person committed a crime, put them on parole. If they don't commit any crimes within 5 years, expunge the conviction from the person's record. If the jury thinks the prosecutor proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt, then check that box and send the person to prison. </div><div><br /></div><div>Such a dual-choice system would impose different punishments based on the jury's level of confidence that the person committed a crime. Furthermore, if the jury is wrong, then the person can escape future, unwarranted punishment by avoiding other crimes. But, society has additional ability to monitor the accused during the period of parole. In other words: trust, but verify.</div><div><br /></div><div>My guess is that prosecutors wouldn't actually like this option. If you gave many criminal juries that choice, my suspicion is that quite a few would choose the lesser option. The truth is, we're rarely totally certain about guilt or innocence. Eye witnesses, scientific studies show, are often wrong. Human beings are awful lie detectors, so there's not much reason to think juries always get it right in swearing matches, e.g., he said/she said cases.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our system of justice isn't written in stone. We change change it. If you don't like the jury verdict in the Casey Anthony trial, think about whether your gripe is with the jury--or the system. If you don't like the system, think about changing it.</div>Lackeyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00132778812271277972noreply@blogger.com4