My wife and I were just talking about the Rodney Reed case in the car the other day, about how the Innocence Project wants to test the belt that was used in the crime 30 years ago on the basis that if they test the belt and Rodney Reed’s DNA is not found on it, then that would be exculpatory. You can repeat this logic out loud only so many times before you end up just sitting there in silence, shaking your head, wondering how you’re supposed to share a society with people who reason this way.
You are all smart people who don’t need this explained to you, but a lack of Reed’s 30 year old DNA on the murder weapon doesn’t actually demonstrate anything except that his DNA is not on the murder weapon. It might be lightly suggestive, but it certainly doesn’t prove anything and it most certainly doesn’t rule him out as the perpetrator to a standard that would justify overturning a 30-year-old conviction.
You are all smart people who don’t need this explained to you, but a lack of Reed’s 30 year old DNA on the murder weapon doesn’t actually demonstrate anything except that his DNA is not on the murder weapon. It might be lightly suggestive, but it certainly doesn’t prove anything and it most certainly doesn’t rule him out as the perpetrator to a standard that would justify overturning a 30-year-old conviction.
The arguments for the innocence of the Central Park 5 have a very similar nature. Matching the semen at the crime scene to a known suspect does not exonerate the others who were accused of participating. Police always knew the rape to involve multiple assailants. The fact that they figured out who the mysterious semen belonged to cannot logically exonerate the other participants.
This is like a logic question from a standardized test for grade schoolers and very large shares of the population are tripped up by it.
This is like a logic question from a standardized test for grade schoolers and very large shares of the population are tripped up by it.
You see this in a lot of these cases. Were the central Park five involved in that rape? The only people who know that with complete certainty are the five of them, but what the public does know with total certainty, because it is a matter of pure logic, is that the existence of a sixth person‘s DNA at the scene does not — cannot! — prove they weren’t.
Maybe I look at all the evidence and I think they probably did it, maybe you look at all the evidence and think maybe they didn’t, but if you find yourself saying the words, “they can’t be guilty because they were proved innocent by DNA evidence,” you’ve stepped off the reservation. You are now in the realm of things that are trivially demonstrated to be false. It cannot even in principle be true that the DNA evidence exonerates them.
Maybe I look at all the evidence and I think they probably did it, maybe you look at all the evidence and think maybe they didn’t, but if you find yourself saying the words, “they can’t be guilty because they were proved innocent by DNA evidence,” you’ve stepped off the reservation. You are now in the realm of things that are trivially demonstrated to be false. It cannot even in principle be true that the DNA evidence exonerates them.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
