Release of MarshalPlan 2.2 -- with a Player to Make the Application (and the Buttons) Run

Years ago David Schum and I developed the notion of an evidence marshaling system. We developed a kind of computer embodiment, or expression, of that evidence marshaling system, which we eventually called "MarshalPlan."

I am (once again) releasing MarshalPlan 2.2.

This moniker -- MarshalPlan 2.2 -- amounts to a bit of self-mockery: MarshalPlan 2.2 is not a software "prototype." Far from it.

However, MarshalPlan 2.2 may be more than just some scratchings on a page that state in words (text) how a MarshalPlan application might work.

MarshalPlan 2.2 is a genuine standalone application based on the user-friendly programming language Revolution Enterprise(tm). This standalone illustrates -- with images, fields, buttons (links), and so on -- how a computer program to support the marshaling and assessment of evidence in preparation for trials and also for the conduct of trials might work.

To retrieve MarshalPlan 2.2 click on this link. Download all of the Revolution stacks into a single folder. These stacks all have the suffix "rev". To make these stacks run properly you need a "Revolution Player." To get this free player go here and download the version of the player (either Windows or Mac OSX) that you need. Then drag-drop the "Network.rev" icon onto the "Revolution Player" icon or open the Revolution Player icon and then open the Network.rev stack, or file. You should be in business now; the buttons, or links, in the various stacks should allow you to navigate between the stacks as well as within the stacks. (However, it is possible you will have to drag-drop all of the stacks onto the Revolution Player icon if you wish to navigate between the stacks. Please let me know if this turns out to be the case.)

There are numerous things wrong with the standalone that you will retrieve by following the above instructions; the stacks have all sorts of defects. Furthermore, the collection of stacks that you will retrieve has some very large gaps and omissions. The defects and gaps include the following:

1. There is very, very, very little textual explanation of the theory behind the strategies that are embedded in MarshalPlan 2.2. To find that theory and those explanations you will have to wander about my personal web site. If you want a really comprehensive explanation of MarshalPlan, you will have to invite me to give a leisurely talk (preferably on a tropical island or some other attractive venue).

2. Some buttons and links don't work. When that happens, try other buttons and links.

3. Some important stacks are entirely missing. E.g., the "Narrative" stack.
The most important missing stacks are those having to do with the development of evidential argument from evidence to factual propositions and with the assessment of the probative value of the evidence. For a discussion of the methods that might be used for this purpose, see Special Issue on Graphic and Visual Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings, 6 Law, Probability and Risk Nos. 1-4 (Oxford University Press, 2007).

4. MarshalPlan 2.2 is not equipped to be hooked up to a database. This is a most serious deficiency. But -- in my defense -- MarshalPlan 2.2 is NOT a prototype. It is, rather, only a kind of elaborate visual illustration of some of the directions that development of software for marshaling evidence in legal settings should take.

I am brash enough to believe that many of the ideas reflected in MarshalPlan 2.2 are both novel and worthwhile. But I am mortal and thoroughly fallible -- particularly when it comes to programming -- and I would very much like to hear your thoughts, suggestions, and criticisms.

Retrieve an Older Version of MarshalPlan

A PERMANENT FIX HAS BEEN FOUND. Go here for instructions. The original post, which follows, is therefore no longer pertinent.

&&&&

Retrieve MarshalPlan 2.0 here.

Please take seriously my earlier heartfelt statement of the purpose and limitations of such standalone versions of MarshalPlan!

Improvised Online Version of MarshalPlan 2.2

A PERMANENT FIX HAS BEEN FOUND. Go here for instructions. The original post, which follows, is therefore no longer pertinent.

&&&&

Until I can figure out how to put the entire network of MarshalPlan 2.2 stacks online as a single standalone, I am making the following stacks available online as separate standalones:

Analysts
Witnesses
Case Theory
Evidence of Material Facts
Evidence for and against Material Facts
Legal Argument
Legal Rules
Legal Source Material
Loose Thoughts
Network Manager
Possibilities
Elimination of Possibilities
Questions & Issues
Raw Evidence
Records
Actor Scenario
Case Scenario
Tangible Evidence
Actor Time Line
Case Time Line
Time Line for Tangible Evidence
Time Line for Witness
Types of Evidence Sources

Please see my previous post (March 12, 2008) for a short statement about the nature of MarshalPlan 2.2 and for heartfelt and important hedges and disclaimers about MarshalPlan 2.2. Thank you.

&&&&

Another interim remedy: retrieve MarshalPlan 2.0 here!

Public Release of MarshalPlan 2.2

Years ago David Schum and I developed the notion of an evidence marshaling system. We developed a kind of computer embodiment, or expression, of that evidence marshaling system, which we eventually called "MarshalPlan."

Today I am releasing MarshalPlan 2.2.

This moniker -- MarshalPlan 2.2 -- amounts to a bit of self-mockery: MarshalPlan 2.2 is not a software "prototype." Far from it.

However, MarshalPlan 2.2 is more than just some scratchings on a page that state in words (text) how a MarshalPlan application might work.

MarshalPlan 2.2 is a genuine standalone application based on the user-friendly programming language Revolution Enterprise(tm). This standalone illustrates -- with images, fields, buttons (links), and so on -- how a computer program to support the marshaling and assessment of evidence in preparation for trials and also for the conduct of trials might work.

To retrieve MarshalPlan 2.2 click on this link.

Important update, March 15, 2008: For a reason that eludes me the buttons in the main stack ["Network"] in the standalone no longer flip the user to other stacks in the network. I have tried to correct this problem -- but to no avail. My apologies. When I find a fix, I will report back. My original message continues below. Thank you for your patience.

Interim remedy: Go to post of March 16 to retrieve individual stacks as separate standalones.

Another interim remedy: Retrieve an earlier version of MarshalPkPlan -- MarshalPlan 2.0 -- by clicking on this link.

A PERMANENT FIX HAS BEEN FOUND. Go here for instructions.

There are numerous things wrong with the standalone that you will retrieve by clicking on the above link, and the standalone application that you will retrieve has numerous gaps, including the following:

1. There is very, very, very little textual explanation of the theory behind the strategies that are embedded in MarshalPlan 2.2. To find that theory and those explanations you will have to wander about my personal web site. If you want a really comprehensive explanation of MarshalPlan, you will have to invite me to give a leisurely talk (preferably on a tropical island or some other attractive venue).

2. Some buttons and links don't work. When that happens, try other buttons and links.

3. Some important stacks are entirely missing. E.g., the "Narratives" stack. The most important missing stacks are those having to do with the development of evidential argument from evidence to factual propositions and with the assessment of the probative value of the evidence. For a discussion of the methods that might be used for this purpose, see Special Issue on Graphic and Visual Representations of Evidence and Inference in Legal Settings, 6 Law, Probability and Risk Nos. 1-4 (Oxford University Press, 2007).

4. MarshalPlan 2.2 is not equipped to be hooked up to a database. This is a most serious deficiency. But -- in my defense -- MarshalPlan 2.2 is NOT a prototype. It is, rather, only a kind of elaborate visual illustration of some of the directions that development of software for marshaling evidence in legal settings should take.

I am brash enough to believe that many of the ideas reflected in MarshalPlan 2.2 are both novel and worthwhile. But I am mortal and thoroughly fallible -- particularly when it comes to programming -- and I would very much like to hear your thoughts, suggestions, and criticisms.

A Brief Suspension

Due to research and writing commitments and plans, I am going to suspend this blog for a while. In the meantime I may - or I may not - post material of a more personal nature on the blog Prime Thoughts. If I do post material there, I will probably do so only infrequently.

I hope to see you (so to speak) later!

What Do Crutches for Thinking about Evidence Have to Say about the Nature of (Wo)Man?

A fragment from the concluding passage of P. Tillers, "Are There Universal Principles or Forms of Evidential Inference? Of Inference Networks and Onto-Epistemology" (extensive footnotes omitted), in J. Jackson, M. Langer & P. Tillers, eds., Crime, Procedure, and Evidence in a Comparative and International Context (Hart Publishing, forthcoming 2008):

A Rebirth of Aristotelian Epistemology and Ontology?

The root of these ‘exceptions’ to NAGs [network- and- generalisation models of evidential inference] (and of other ‘exceptions’ that remain to be identified) is a fundamental onto-epistemological premise or hypothesis. This hypothesis begins with a firm denial that rational inference involves only explicit logic. Although human inference is a rational and logical activity, human inference – ie the inferential activity of the human organism – involves not just (let alone only, or even mainly) explicit ratiocinative processes. Inference is one of the activities of a sentient human organism. (The same is true of non-human organisms.) The human organism, though sentient, is ‘rational’ to its core: Logic – a complex logic or a set of logics – is embedded in the human organism and regulates its activities. It is true that many (and probably most) indwelling human logics are still poorly understood. But however imperfectly we understand the subconscious logics within us, there is good reason to think that such logics are nevertheless ‘there’ – that a variety of indwelling logics are at work in the human organism. The bottom line is that although it is true that human beings are inferential reasoners, much human inferential reasoning – a vast amount of it – is hidden from human sight.

Since the dawn of modern artificial intelligence – and even before – man (a/k/a his mind, a/k/a his brain, a/k/a his neural system, a/k/a woman, etc., etc.) has been analogized to a mechanical computer. This analogy (which is often taken very seriously) amounts to an ontological-epistemological revolution; it amounts to a rejection of the dichotomy between mind and body, thought and matter, and it restores, in modern guise, the Aristotelian notion of organism. To think in terms of organisms is to think in terms of purposes and functions.

The emerging reversion to an Aristotelian ontology is, in my view, a lovely revolution; this ‘new’ – but ancient – way of thinking about man tends in the right direction. However, the contemporary turn in fields such as AI towards functional and teleological accounts of man frequently suffers from a serious defect. The ruling image, model, or analogy of man (or human mind) as computer does not always sufficiently stress that the ‘human computer’ is a developing computational creature.

What sort of evolution does the human inferential computer undergo? Common sense, the presuppositions of the study of evidence and inference in legal settings, and a great deal else (eg, thermostats) suggest or suppose that it is possible, here and there, for tacit human inference – or, if you prefer, inference simpliciter – to emerge into the light, to become explicit. Such considerations and such examples of the victories of relatively complete explicit ratiocination (i.e., examples of a fairly high degree of inferential automation) suggest, more broadly, that the human organism has some capacity (the full extent of which is as yet necessarily undetermined) to force at least some its tacit, or subconscious, logical processes into the light of consciousness and to make previously tacit inference explicit or, in any event, to make relatively tacit inferences more explicit and thus more subject to some explicit logical analysis and argument. This latter function is, in my view, frequently (but not always) precisely the central function of mental crutches and representations such as NAGs. (Sometimes – but only sometimes – inbred human logics will manage to emerge from the human animal and escape from the clutches of their creator. See Isaac Asimov, I, Robot (1950). Less dramatically, consider once again the lowly thermostat – or the flying drones now used by the military for surveillance and even for combat operations.)

On this view of things – on my neo-Aristotelian view of the general relationship between the logic(s) in (wo)man and (wo)man's explicit ratiocination about the world (including him- or herself) – an important function of explicit reflection, analysis, argument, and reason is to have the human organism wrest out of itself and its encounters with the ‘world’ (including its encounters with itself) some principles and logics (forms of reasoning) that the organism can hold consciously in mind or, in any event, that can be recorded and stored elsewhere, by means of marks made in the world, as in readable computer scripts and programs. The aim of such explicit expression and formulation is in part to enable the organism to facilitate and, perhaps paradoxically, improve the workings of at least some of the logics that dwell – hitherto unseen – in the human organism (and in its environment).

When such victories of explicit ratiocination (either victories that facilitate inference or those that automate inference) are achieved, they ought to be celebrated. And whenever possible, the human organism should use its emergent logic to improve its immanent logic. But on my view of things, humility about human inferential capacity – humility, that is, about the power of explicit inferential calculation – has the status of a virtual first principle. It must not be forgotten that many or most of the logical operations of the human organism remain hidden from the human organism’s sight and comprehension. In many situations, therefore, (unless we share the wild-eyed – but seductive! – optimism of a Marvin Minsky) the only reasonable expectation we can have of deliberation about evidence is that such deliberation will bring some shards of our indwelling logical processes to light. But we should remain alert (i) to the possibility that sometimes we will just have to trust our unanalyzed hunches and (ii) to the perverse possibility that it is not always the case that explicit analysis of evidence will improve our inferential performance.

How to Make Time Lines Useful?

The basic notion of a time line is simple: arrange possible events in their possible chronological order. But it is often hard to construct time lines that are useful. Time lines can generate noise rather than enlightenment.

Time Lines via LEXIS

I just noticed that LEXIS now offers law students free access to CaseMap's tool for developing time lines. See LEXIS blurb about CaseMap. This is an interesting development. Time lines are important both for investigation and for many trials.

Lay Participation in Criminal Trials in Japan Draws Nigh

The injection of lay participation -- in the form of "assessors" -- into criminal trials in Japan draws nigh; this law reform goes into effect in 2009. The text of the 2004 act -- Act Concerning Participation of Lay Assessors in Criminal Trials (Lay Assessor Act) (Law No. 63 of 2004) -- is available here

Character, Crime & Prescience

It's a good thing I'm not in the crime prediction business.

I was looking through some old photographs last night when I found a signed photograph of a high school classmate. He was in my chemistry, physics, and English classes. He was likable. And he was brilliant.

His name was Edward Jackson. He was among the cadre of slide rule toters. Slide rules were all the rage -- Kessler was the preferred brand -- before electronic calculators came along.

Edward was in some fancy company. For example, one of our classmates went on to make a sterling career in astrophysics.

After I found Edward Jackson's photograph, a wave of nostalgia seized me. After graduating from high school, I had left Columbus, Ohio, and I had returned to Columbus only rarely. Consequently, I had lost touch with childhood friends. Last night I again felt a bit sad about this.

I decided to GOOGLE Jackson. I didn't think I'd find anything. But, I thought, why not?

I did find something almost immediately. I found an August 24, 1983, New York Times article entitled:

Ohio Rape Defendant Was Esteemed as Physician

And there was this in the body of the article:

A year ago, Dr. Edward Franklin Jackson Jr. was a Columbus internist and hospital board member who had the respect of his peers and a successful practice.

On Tuesday, Dr. Jackson's lawyer said that for seven years, the physician also planned a series of rapes. He called Dr. Jackson ''a person who acted compulsively, obsessively, over and over again.''

Dr. Jackson, who was arrested Sept. 5, 1982, in the apartment of two Columbus women, described himself as ''two people, a responsible citizen during the day and an assaulter at night.'' He was charged with raping 38 women and committing 60 other felonies.

&&&&

If convicted of all 60 charges, which include 22 rapes, Dr. Jackson could be sentenced to 1,380 years in prison.

As a student at Columbus North High School in the class of 1961, the defendant was remembered as a brilliant student, ''very friendly and curious and anxious to please,'' a chemistry teacher, Jim Anderson, said. The student rushed through Ohio State, earning a degree in anatomy in 1964.

In 1965 he met Alice Carolyn Hansen, who became his wife. They have two daughters. He finished his medical degree at Ohio State in 1968 and began his residency at a Columbus hospital. It was then that Dr. Jackson was arrested near the university and charged with possession of burglary tools. ... The case was dropped, but the hospital told Dr. Jackson to leave. He Served in the Army.

When Dr. Jackson returned to Columbus, he joined the staffs of Mount Carmel and St. Anthony and volunteered his services at a community health center. By 1978 he had become a member of the St. Anthony board of trustees and an officer in the Berwick Civic Association.

The story then takes a twist. Another Black man -- whose surname was also Jackson -- was convicted and imprisoned for several of the rapes that Edward Jackson Committed. It was a case of mistaken eyewitness identification:

Meanwhile, the police were baffled by a series of assaults on women that began in 1975.

William Bernard Jackson, who resembles the physician in appearance, was convicted of the rapes and sentenced to 14 to 50 years in prison. It was nearly five years before the police arrested Dr. Edward Jackson, realized their mistake and released William Jackson.

A bit of further investigation revealed that Edward Jackson was convicted. A September 10, 2002, story by Mike Harden in the Columbus Dispatch -- "Rapist's Victim Ends Anonymity to Fight Parole" -- stated:

The physician, whose Jekyll-and-Hyde insanity plea didn't wash with the courts, was found guilty of 36 rapes and 52 related felonies, and sentenced to 282 to 985 years.

The 58-year-old Jackson, who entered prison 19 years ago this month, bides his time in the Southeastern Correctional Institution in Lancaster.

Other newspaper articles reveal that Edward Jackson kept meticulous records -- on 3" x 5" cards -- about his rape victims. A story (August 23, 1983) in the Columbus Dispatch -- "Mass rape suspect goes to trial" by Rosemary Armao -- relates:

Dr. Edward Franklin Jackson Jr. -- an internist, Columbus civic leader and the father of two teenage girls -- pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity to 96 counts of rape, aggravated burglary, sexual imposition and kidnapping.

Authorities suspect there are even more crimes, dating back to 1975, but are prosecuting only in cases where the women are willing to testify. At last report, about 100 witnesses, including more than 40 victims, were willing to travel the 130 miles to Akron.

&&&

Police found Dr. Jackson Sept. 5, 1982, while investigating a report of a prowler in an apartment where the women occupants were on vacation. With him they allegedly found a black ski mask, knotted rope and a flashlight.

&&&

In the doctor's Mercedes, police found a list of 65 women's names with dates next to them.

''He was always so nice and polite -- not flashy or loud or elaborate,'' said a long-time neighbor of the doctor after the arrest. Indeed, his patients continued to see him while he awaited trial, free on $335,000 bond.

I confess I am shaken and baffled - at a personal level.

The academic side of me is also unnerved. Some years ago I published a paper in which I opined that parents generally make pretty good guesses about the behavior of their children. I thought I knew Edward Franklin Jackson well. But that he would become a serial rapist -- well, of that I had no inkling whatever.

People are strange. Are they also almost completely unpredictable?

Sorting Out YourThoughts about a Case (or a Possible Case)

Here is a device -- part of a system -- for sorting out, or organizing, your thoughts about a case or possible case:

Loose Thoughts Stack (Windows)

Loose Thoughts Stack (Mac OSX)

This stack -- "Loose Thoughts" -- is one element of the experimental software MarshalPlan 2.1.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Japan's Minister of Justice on Trial by Jury and Capital Punishment

David McNeill, Justice Minister talks in death-penalty riddles, Japan Times Online (Jan. 27, 2008):

In an interview in Weekly Asahi [Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama] called the jury system "an imitation of foreign countries," and added, "I believe it is being enacted in Japan because it is being done overseas. I think it will be great if the system works well, and that it should be re-evaluated."

&&&

[In another interview Justice Minister said:]

As the Japanese place so much importance on the value of life, it is thought that one should pay with one's own life for taking the life of another. You see, the Western nations are civilizations based on power and war. So, conversely, things are moving against the death penalty. This is an important point to understand. The so-called civilizations of power and war are the opposite of us. From incipient stages, their conception of the value of life is weaker than the Japanese. Therefore, they are moving toward abolition of the death penalty.

It is important that this discourse on civilizations be understood.

All clear?

Legal Transplants from Abroad in Japan; Police Treatment in Japan of Criminal Suspects in Custody

David McNeill, Citizens routinely denied legal rights, Japan Times Online (Feb. 2, 2008):

[Constitutional] safeguards [of the rights of criminal suspects] are interpreted by Japanese courts in a way that makes them virtually meaningless.

The provisions were drafted by the postwar Allied Occupation, with the goal of creating an "adversary system of justice" along American lines: Investigating and gathering evidence should be separated from considering evidence and deciding a case; judges should be removed from the investigating function; and prosecution and defense must enjoy equal opportunity to present evidence.

This reform was a radical change from the prewar system in which prosecutor and judge were not clearly separated, and defendants were seen more as part of an inquisitorial process than a neutral rehearsal of evidence and fact.

Says [Lawrence] Repeta [Omiya Law School Professor]: "Many observers agree that what we have today bears a closer resemblance to the prewar system than the adversary system envisioned by the drafters of the Constitution. Judges question witnesses aggressively when they wish, and prosecutors play a dominant role, with defense lawyers typically in a minor role in trials."

&&&&

So who will protect the suspect [in criminal cases in Japan]? Well, in Japan it will be the police, according to new interrogation rules issued this week in the wake of the Kagoshima and Toyama cases. From April, detectives will be explicitly forbidden from striking, shaking or even touching someone in custody, or from using words "likely to embarrass or make a suspect feel uneasy," harming their dignity or promising lighter treatment in return for a confession.

The new guidelines suggest that the impact of jury trials is already being felt: The police are "mindful," says state broadcaster NHK, that juries who mistrust the police could undermine trials. But the monitoring will be internal, and the police are still refusing to cede a key demand from the Japan Federation of Bar Associations: The videotaping of interrogations.

"There is no change in a system where insiders check other insiders," Hokkaido University Professor Yuji Shiratori told Kyodo News on Friday.

Rap Music Lyrics as Evidence of Guilt in Criminal Trials

See Andrea L. Dennis, Poetic (In)Justice? Rap Music Lyrics as Art, Life, and Criminal Evidence, 31 Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts 1 (2007).

The article has some delicious, or appalling, quotations from training manuals for prosecutors. (Training manuals for trial lawyers display the law's equivalent of the relationship between lawmaking and meat processing.)

The use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials is fertile soil for the cultivation of devilishly-difficult (and interesting) essay exam questions. Students, you are hereby forewarned.

Time and Evidence

Time is involved in a number of important and separate ways in fact investigation, evidential argument, and evidence assessment in legal settings (and probably in many other kinds of settings):

1. Time and Fact (a/k/a Evidential) Investigation

A. The history of an investigation (including investigative paths not taken as well as those taken)
B. Guesses or predictions about the discovery of evidence through future action

2. Time and Events at Issue

A. The (possible) sequence of events at issue in time
B. The causal nexus between events at issue in time

3. Time and Sources of Evidence

A. The (possible) sequence of events pertaining to states of sources of evidence (such as "human sources," human beings)
B. The causes of changes over time in the states of sources of evidence

4. Time and Deliberation

A. The order of receipt of evidence by (or submission of evidence to) the fact finder or decision maker
B. The sequence of deliberation by the trier of fact or decision maker

5. Time and Mind (a/k/a Judgment)

A. Changes in the trier's or decision maker's recollections, sentiments, and similar matters that affect evidential assessment
B. Temporal causes of such changes in the mind or judgment of the trier or decision maker

A system to facilitate or support fact investigation, evidential argument, and evidence assessment should be sensitive to these various perspectives on evidence, to these various ways of organizing evidence and thinking about evidence. I pledge that future iterations of MarshalPlan will (eventually) incorporate (all of) these various ways of marshaling evidence and thinking about evidence.

Perfume Sniffing and Wine Tasting -- and Expertise

In Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999) Justice Breyer spoke of a hypothetical "perfume tester [who, Breyer intimated, might be] able to distinguish among 140 odors at a sniff."

On the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC radio, on January 23, 2008, a guest described a study that showed that wine testers invariably thought that wines they thought were more expensive tasted better than wines that the tasters thought were less expensive. The WNYC web site summarized the story this way:

A recent study shows that raising the price of wine makes it taste better. When tasting wines they’d been told cost more, testers’ brains showed more pleasure than when drinking cheaper wines…even when the wines were exactly the same! The study’s lead author is California Institute of Technology economics professor Antonio Rangel.

Tim van Gelder's GOOGLE Group "Legal Mapping"

Tim van Gelder has created a new GOOGLE group: Legal Mapping. He describes the purpose of the group this way:

A group for discussing the use of software tools to visualise reasoning in legal contexts, with particular focus on Austhink's attempts to produce a tool adapted for legal use.

Consider joining this discussion group.

Distributed Dynamic Investigation, Inference, and Proof in a Legal Setting

The business of fact investigation, inference, and factual persuasion and demonstration in a legal context is convoluted enough. See A Theory of Preliminary Fact Investigation.

Matters get more convoluted when the business of investigation, inference, persuasion, and demonstration becomes both distributed and dynamic.

So: Imagine that your job is to investigate and assess a collection of evidence -- or, more broadly, to address a possible legal question that raises factual, investigative, and inferential questions -- and imagine that you are a supervising analyst, investigator, or decision maker whose job it is to supervise and coordinate the work of some underlings -- other analysts, investigators, or decision makers.

You might envision part of your task in the way I have depicted it (roughly!) in the standalone Revolution stack META-MANAGER (Windows) or META-MANAGER (Mac OS).

The ingredients of your meta-network -- the pieces of your picture of your (managerial, supervisory) task -- will consist of the networks of your underlings, which may have this structure

or, by rough equivalence, this structure

Now -- to make things worse, to make matters much, much worse (but also more interesting) -- imagine that this quasi-network of quasi-networks is your frame -- your vision of your present and future situation -- in the construct shown below as you sail through time and space (which - i.e., sailing through time - means that evidence changes, preferences change [or become clarified], and judgments [or opinions] about existing evidence change):

How will you -- supervising investigator, meta-manager of fact investigation -- manage all of this? Will you, perhaps, try not to think too much about how you manage to do what you manage to do? Or will you try to pick apart the different pieces of your complex activity? Would you do so if some parts of your inferential and investigative work could be automated?

A Universal Cognitive Illusion -- Or "Your Suitcase Is Not as Small as You Think It Is"

Flash: A Suitcase Serves as a Nifty Form of Demonstrative Evidence.

"Guilty verdicts without a body are rare,"Seattle pi.com (June 29, 2004):

Mark Elby was charged with killing his wife and then putting her body in a suitcase and "throwing it off the 182-foot-high Deception Pass Bridge."

"When defense attorneys in court argued that a woman couldn't fit in a suitcase, the prosecuting team brought a suitcase into the courtroom and had a petite woman curl up inside."

Elby was convicted.

Another Corpus Delicti without a Corpus

See Tom Hays (AP), "Man arrested [in] NY woman's disappearance," nj.com (Jan. 15, 2008)

&&&

Technicalities can not only get you off. Sometimes they can send you to the gallows.

Pocono Record (December 24, 2007):

Q. The police suspect there's been a murder but no body has turned up anywhere. Does this mean they have to give up on the case? A. That's what 1949 London serial killer John George Haigh boasted to police after killing Mrs. Durand-Deacon, saying he had dissolved her remains in acid so the victim no longer existed, says E.J. Wagner in "The Science of Sherlock Holmes."

"You will find the sludge which remains on Leopold Road. But," he smiled confidently, "you can't prove murder without a body."

Haigh was mistaken on this point, as many others have been. The law does not require a corpse but rather a "corpus delicti," or "the body of evidence that establishes the crime has taken place." Not understanding this, Haigh made a full confession of the killing, plus five others, claiming he was a vampire in dire need of their blood. The police pegged his motive as going after the women's valuables. When experts examined the sludge, they spotted small polished pebbles that turned out to be gallstones of the late Mrs. Durand-Deacon. Also found were her dentures, bone fragments and part of a handbag. Later, the jury wasted no time in finding Haigh guilty and sentencing him to death.