andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-197 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I recently read a bizarre article by Janet Malcolm on a murder trial in NYC. What threw me about the article was that the story was utterly commonplace (by the standards of today’s headlines): divorced mom kills ex-husband in a custody dispute over their four-year-old daughter. The only interesting features were (a) the wife was a doctor and the husband were a dentist, the sort of people you’d expect to sue rather than slay, and (b) the wife hired a hitman from within the insular immigrant community that she (and her husband) belonged to. But, really, neither of these was much of a twist. To add to the non-storyness of it all, there were no other suspects, the evidence against the wife and the hitman was overwhelming, and even the high-paid defense lawyers didn’t seem to be making much of an effort to convince anyone of their client’s innocents. (One of the closing arguments was that one aspect of the wife’s story was so ridiculous that it had to be true. In the lawyer’s wo
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1 I recently read a bizarre article by Janet Malcolm on a murder trial in NYC. [sent-1, score-0.265]
2 What threw me about the article was that the story was utterly commonplace (by the standards of today’s headlines): divorced mom kills ex-husband in a custody dispute over their four-year-old daughter. [sent-2, score-0.293]
3 The only interesting features were (a) the wife was a doctor and the husband were a dentist, the sort of people you’d expect to sue rather than slay, and (b) the wife hired a hitman from within the insular immigrant community that she (and her husband) belonged to. [sent-3, score-0.614]
4 To add to the non-storyness of it all, there were no other suspects, the evidence against the wife and the hitman was overwhelming, and even the high-paid defense lawyers didn’t seem to be making much of an effort to convince anyone of their client’s innocents. [sent-5, score-0.513]
5 The strange thing about the Janet Malcolm article is that Malcolm is so sympathetic to the killers (or, more specifically, to the ex-wife who made the call; Malcolm doesn’t say much about the actual shooter). [sent-19, score-0.178]
6 Simpson didn’t do it), but she definitely seemed to be rooting for the woman to get off, to the extent that she (Malcolm) called up one of the lawyers in the middle of the trial in what looks like an attempt to force a mistrial. [sent-22, score-0.349]
7 Malcolm’s main argument seems to be that the woman who ordered the killing was represented by a very good lawyer, but, because of difficulties having to do with other lawyers involved in the case, this super-defender didn’t have a chance to really do his thing and win the case. [sent-23, score-0.257]
8 Why am I writing hundreds of words about a months-old magazine article on a year-old court case that wasn’t so remarkable in the first place? [sent-25, score-0.373]
9 On the surface, it’s the story of a woman in a difficult situation (an immigrant woman, a doctor, divorced with a young child and trapped in a family feud) who’s been accused of murder, and, as the story goes on, it becomes pretty clear that she actually did it. [sent-36, score-0.531]
10 At the next level, it’s a New Journalism-style bit of court reporting, where we are told not just about the facts of the case but also, “Boys on the Bus”-style, about the other reporters and about the journalist’s personal sympathies. [sent-39, score-0.223]
11 Finally, amidst the colorful details of the court case, Malcolm occasionally offers a thoughtful reflection on the court system. [sent-41, score-0.338]
12 ) Anyway, the point is that I found Malcolm’s article to be thought-provoking throughout, much more than one would expect from the pretty basic story of the crime. [sent-46, score-0.195]
13 (Once Malcolm sat in the trial for several weeks and interviewed all the participants, it’s no surprise that she turned it into an article (and maybe, soon, into a book); the real question is why she thought this particular case was worse the effort in the first place. [sent-58, score-0.27]
14 Malcolm refers to the well-known idea that all sorts of lawyers can successfully defend an innocent person; what makes a great defense lawyer is the ability to get a guilty person off. [sent-61, score-0.515]
15 And, indeed, if there’s a hero in Malcolm’s story, it’s the lawyer for the ex-wife, a man who perhaps can work miracles. [sent-62, score-0.204]
16 Any journalist can wring sympathy and a critique of the legal system out of a wrongly-accused person, but a great journalist can extract sympathy from someone who’s manifestly guilty. [sent-64, score-0.576]
17 Perhaps Malcolm would feel it would be cheating to make her argument in the context of an innocent person wrongly accused, or even in an ambiguous case. [sent-68, score-0.181]
18 This reminds me of Malcolm’s most famous article, The Journalist and the Murderer, in which–incredibly (to me)–she was angry at a journalist for deceiving a man who, it turned out, had murdered his entire family! [sent-69, score-0.288]
19 Just because there are some awesome lawyers out there, no, I don’t think every killer has the right to Johnny-Cochran-level representation. [sent-73, score-0.194]
20 I also don’t approve of a journalist trying to use her influence to throw a monkey wrench into a murder trial. [sent-76, score-0.26]
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