This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Amidst the Trump verdict and the SCOTUS drops, it might be easy to miss a smaller verdict this week: Chad Daybell guilty of murder.
If this doesn't ring any bells, you can watch a whole damn documentary about it, should you feel so inclined. Or read a book about it. Or just a timeline. Go ahead! It's okay. I'll wait.
Anyway, this is perhaps the second-least surprising verdict of the week. Absent literal video of the murders, the evidence that Daybell took part in these killings is about as ironclad as it comes. So the trial, really, was about which part. This is often a challenge when "conspiracy" comes into play. If you have two good suspects, and you think they worked together, but each points a finger at the other, what do you do?
Lori Vallow was sentenced last year to life in prison for killing two of her children and conspiring in the murder of Chad Daybell's first wife. In arguing that case, prosecutors were tasked in part with establishing both that Vallow was mentally competent to stand trail, and that she was not entitled to mitigation on grounds that she was being manipulated by Chad. In fact the prosecution went further, asserting that Vallow was the one manipulating Daybell "through emotional and sexual control." Vallow was convicted on that account of events.
CW angle: quite naturally, that was a big part of Daybell's defense. "The state already proved that I was being manipulated by Vallow!" Indeed. In no time at all, a journalist (and author of the book linked above) was ready to call that defense "misogynistic."
Returning to today, Daybell was convicted on three charges of first degree murder as well as three charges of conspiracy to commit murder (plus some irrelevant lesser charges). While Vallow was given multiple life sentences (reportedly, the death penalty was taken off the table due to the prosecution making a late discovery submission), Daybell's day in court isn't over: prosecution is pushing for the death penalty.
Overall, this seems like a case where police investigation basically functioned as intended. The "doomsday cult" stuff makes for sensational reading/viewing, and there were indeed a number of plots to untangle--a fact which took law enforcement a little time to pick up on. Aside from Chad's sentencing (and the inevitable appeals), one loose thread remains: Vallow has been extradited to Arizona, to stand trial for conspiring to murder her fourth husband and planning the attempted murder of her niece's ex-husband (her now-deceased brother was the one with the gun).
So I don't feel like there's a lot of reason to pick at the CW bits, it looks like justice is broadly being done. It's a bit of a mental splinter to me that the prosecution never had to really get its story straight, and that Chad and Lori have both been convicted, in part, on the theory that they masterminded the whole thing and the other party was merely a catspaw. Perhaps the Arizona trial will give us a clearer picture--Alex Cox, Lori's deceased brother, appears to have also been a bit of a Daybell disciple. Before his death he reportedly expressed concern that he might become Lori and Chad's fall guy.
Perhaps all that remains is some inescapable head-scratching over the relationship between mental illness, religious zeal, and romantic entanglements. I would colloquially and informally call these people crazy. As far as I can tell, Chad's wife was murdered because he wanted out of a marriage without the hassle (or "sin?") of divorce, and Lori's children were murdered because they were interfering with her living her best life with husband number five. (I assume that Daybell and Vallow were not actually perceiving demons, which appears to be how they justified the killings to themselves, and only perceived "darkness" possessing others as a post hoc excuse for hating those who disagreed with them or otherwise interfered with their aims.) Competence to stand trial does not require a person to be in perfect mental health, they just need the ability to have a rational and factual understanding of what the judges and lawyers tell them. Vallow and Daybell appear to meet that standard, so why the state's song-and-dance of insisting that each of them, separately, was psychologically dominating the other? Why not just tell the most likely story--that these were mutually unstable people who fed one another's delusions?
The practical answer, I suspect, is just that the state did not want either jury to perceive the slightest possibility of mitigation. To prevent the obviously guilty from getting off light, the state focused not on the (perfectly adequate!) truth in a logically consistent way, but on the most compelling available narrative in any given moment. Given that I have no sympathy for Vallow or Daybell, I'd say "and nothing of value was lost," but I value the truth too much to dismiss even this slight disregard for consistency across claims as "of no value."
I leave you with this small excerpt from C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters:
I mean, it’s totally possible that these two… nut jobs is probably the best term here… fed off of each other and were both manipulating and masterminds. That seems like an occasional nut dynamic.
This seems like the most plausible explanation to me as well.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
As I understand it, prosecutors are allowed to make inconsistent arguments so long as they're in separate cases — that they claimed "X" in one trial is no bar to claiming "not X" in another trial.
And yet, it seems to me that you can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt both that P and P', unless you are somehow manipulating the evidence. Making the argument is fine, but courts are meant to find facts, not arguments.
More options
Context Copy link
There are many contexts in which the prosecution is allowed to make inconsistent arguments in the same case--for example, stating claims "in the alternative." The American court system is basically structured under the assumption that prosecutors are interested in truth and justice, rather than in winning their cases and clearing their dockets (see also: prosecutorial discretion). Honestly, I think it works out that way more often than not. But there is nevertheless an awful lot of prosecutorial fuckery.
I think you are incorrectly framing this as though the ability to make inconsistent arguments is a unique power held by prosecutors. Any party in any kind of litigation is always free to make inconsistent or alternative arguments. The catch is that typically the jury gets to hear about your inconsistencies, and can choose to hold this against your credibility if it wants to. I didn't read your links, but from your description of the case it sounds like the jury was told about the inconsistent arguments and ultimately still believed the defendant was guilty.
I for one would like to apply stricter standards to the prosecution.
For example, the fact that the defendant can misrepresent the facts as much as they want is not a good reason to also allow the prosecution the same leeway with the truth.
The standard for criminal trials is generally "beyond reasonable doubt". If A and B commit a crime, and prosecutor X convinces their jury that A was the mastermind, and prosecutor Y convinces their jury that B was the mastermind, and they both worked from the same evidence, then at least one of the prosecutors is grossly miscalibrated about what reasonable doubt should mean.
Prosecutors who try to convict people of of stuff they are actually guilty of will not show this behavior. OTOH, with this lower standard, you could have multiple persons be convicted for having fired the same gunshot.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah, the old joke that I've heard frames it as coming from the defense: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: I wasn't even there! And if I was, I didn't do it. And if I did, it was self defense. And if it wasn't, I was insane!"
More options
Context Copy link
No, I've definitely never said that--I've just only talked about prosecution in this thread. You are correct that defendants may also make arguments in the alternative.
The difference is that the defendants (usually!) only have to successfully defend themselves once. Whatever the jury decides, that's the account of the facts that will (usually!) be relied upon through the appeals process for that defendant.
The prosecution, though, is the same party (figuratively, as the state; literally, in some cases, the same person) across multiple cases, and in theory the party being held to a higher standard--because the power of the state is presumably extremely vast, we place a variety of hobbles on it (Bill of Rights, e.g.). Elsewhere in this thread I linked a law review article arguing that cross-case prosecutorial consistency ought to be regarded as part of Procedural Due Process. I find myself amendable to that position.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Right, but barring some sort of bungling by the defense, or dishonesty, or extreme bias, or something going horribly wrong, it should be impossible for the same collection of evidence to meet the burden of proof to actually convict both defendants "beyond a reasonable doubt". It seems to me like the same set of evidence that convicted the first one, simply knowing that a jury convicted the first one, is itself a reasonable doubt on the second one. It's possible that the first was incorrectly convicted of being the mastermind and the second is actually the one, but it's reasonable to doubt it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is common. I recall a case where two robbers, one armed, held up a place and shot someone. Both were convicted as the shooter.
Both had fingerprints on the gun and testified the other guy pulled the trigger. Prosecutors had no problem convicting them both for a crime that logically only one could have committed, the other being an accessory.
Is it possible that both were actually convicted under some statute that both would be guilty of in a case like this regardless of who actually pulled the trigger? Because like MathWizard said above, it seems impossible for two men to be convicted of something which hinged on each of them being the one to pull the trigger without awful defensive representation or judge/jury misconduct. Any evidence which proves that the one man pulled the trigger beyond a reasonable doubt should definitionally introduce a reasonable doubt that the other man pulled the trigger.
More options
Context Copy link
Yep! There is of course a law review article (PDF warning) about it. Totally normal and well within the rules, even though it seems painfully obvious (at least to me, and the author of that article) that it shouldn't be.
I seem to be missing vital context, necessary to follow the law review article. In the United Kingdom the problem of "who pulled the trigger" is solved by the notion of joint enterprise
Thinking about that myself, it strikes me that even UK law is not quite ruthless enough. Here is my theory of how a "two robbers, one shot" case should go.
"proof beyond reasonable doubt" is not a terminal value. The actual goal is to solve an optimization where the two big desiderata pull in opposite directions. First, one wants to live under a justice system that suppresses robbery and murder, so that one does not get robbed or murdered. Second, one notices that justice systems tend to turn into injustice systems. A naively designed justice system will turn into a graver risk than that posed by robbers and murders constrained by no justice system at all. At least in the absence of a justice system one may possess weapons and fight back.
The social dynamic is that a naively designed justice system that suppresses robbery and murder is a power honey pot that attracts the worst kind of people. In time the police force is manned by two kind of people. The first are smart criminals who join the police to abuse police powers and rob and murder under color of law. The second kind of person starts of good, but is corrupted by absolute power and the malign influence of the first kind of person.
We have solutions to these problems. We split the justice system into three parts. The police investigate. The Crown Prosecution Service presents the case to the judge. The judge listens attentively to the defense explaining why the prosecutor is wrong. The instrumental value "proof beyond reasonable doubt" is there to poison the honey pot. Only nerdy, wannabe Sherlock Holmes become detectives and their personal motivation is to crack the case and find out who really did it. Needing to provide convincing proof for the prosecutor to present to the judge filters out personality types who would otherwise be draw to the power wielded by the justice system. The wrong kind of person is filtered out because the system wields power as a system; no individual gets to indulge their personal power trip.
Return to the "two robbers, one shot" conundrum. We don't actually care which one pulled the trigger, and are happy to hang both of them. That works well to further the first goal of suppressing robbery and murder. If we care who pulled the trigger, a smart robber might find himself a stupid and violent partner, to do the bloody part and take the drop if the victim dies. Ugh! We don't want that. But what of the second, more troubling goal, of poisoning the power honey pot, to avoid attracting the sort of person, attracted to police work for power and personal gain? The prosecution still need to prove the robbery element beyond reasonable doubt. And they still need to prove the murder, except for exact attribution, beyond reasonable doubt. I think that the honey pot remains poisoned, even without needing to say which robber fired the fatal shot.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link