jenk

I had my first experience with jury duty this week. I didn't make it on the jury, but I went through voir dire. One topic that came up repeatedly was witness testimony: How do you decide which witnesses to believe?

So there we are, going through a scenario proposed by one of the deputy prosecutors. It's a story about a 5-year-old, who somehow ended up with the "Kiss Me I'm Irish" button he'd wanted Mom to buy at the store. He'd tell us some of the story, then ask us what we're thinking of the situation, what we'd do if we were the parent. I distinguish myself by not wanting to commit myself one way or the other.

Sure, it seems obvious the kid stole it. But: What if the store clerk gave it to him? What if another person bought it for the cute kid? After the kid says a friend gave it to him, and the friend denies it, I think, What if he doesn't know the store clerk's name and he doesn't want to admit to taking something from a stranger? I don't think it's likely, mind you, but it's a nonzero possibility. After all, the deputy prosecutor said his mother told this story at every Thanksgiving for years and years, so there has to be more that we haven't been told, right?

Now, in weighing evidence, I agree with

elfs that incentives count, as does corroborating evidence. But the key to weighing evidence in a professional setting (which is how I approached being a juror) is this: I am just plain skeptical. I am a software tester. My job is to poke and prod for the inconsistencies. Coders tell me something is fixed and I often come back with evidence that it isn't; a program gives me the right answer once, and the wrong answer later, and I have to try to figure out if it was ever really right or just looked right.

Then I thought about working in tech support. Every day, I'd have people call and lie to me. And they weren't nervous about it, because they thought they were telling the truth.

"Yeah, Word won't start, and I'm getting pretty pissed about it."
"Uh, this is Windows support, did you talk with the Word support folks?"
"Yeah, I did, they said it was a Windows problem. And let me say I don't like this runaround."
[...]
"Well, what do you see on the screen? Can you describe it to me?"
"Yeah, I got it...it's a black screen...it says 'Cannot read from hard drive.'"

Turned out his BIOS was complaining that it couldn't find the hard disk. The customer didn't think about Windows vs Word, much less software vs hardware. So we got to spend some time cutting through what he THOUGHT was happening to get to what WAS happening. I know that such a customer was not intending to lie to me. The customer was speaking the truth as he understood it; that truth just didn't have any connection to reality as I (and my overeducated techie geek coworkers) understood it. And if I was put into a situation where I was the novice, my interpretations would probably be off-base as well.

stealthcello once told me she'd had an inquiry from someone looking for a green kitten. Green? Cats come in brown, black, red, white, gray - not green. Later she's talking with a friend about this, trying to figure out if someone would dye a cat's hair green. The friend looks down and points at an orange cat and says, "I see a green cat right there."

To quote Cirus of the Damned:

"You know how confused witnesses to violent crimes are. Have three people see the same crime and you get three different heights, different hair colors."
"Yeah, yeah, witness testimony is a bitch," Zerbrowski said.

It's easy to say, "All we want are the facts, ma'am". It's harder to get it.