What is the evidence for that? Did they have some very specific type of unusual gun? Or do they mean “they were the roughly same kind of gun the family had (along with millions of other gun owners)”
I don’t know much about guns, but I don’t think there’s definitive proof that the guns used in the murders belonged to the family. I believe the shotgun used to kill Alex’s son was loaded with alternating birdshot and buckshot.
A 300 Blackout caliber weapon was used to kill Maggie Murdaugh, and several Blackout cartridges found at the scene of the murders matched in several ways other rifle cartridges found around the Murdaugh estate, leading prosecutors to suggest that Maggie was killed with a family weapon.
It’s known that both the murdered son, Paul, and the surviving son, Buster, both had 300 blackouts, which apparently cost several thousand dollars apiece, but Paul’s gun was missing years before the murders.
Law enforcement tested some of the family’s guns but never found the actual murder weapons. I don’t think they tested all of them. This family had guns everywhere.
The other circumstantial thing is that supposedly Alex invited his son and wife there that night - they didn’t live there, so no other potential miscreants could have known for sure that they would be there if it was a targeted attack meant for those two specifically.
Murdaugh’s wife was suspicious about meeting at the kennels:
Was Alex Murdaugh ever tested for GSR (gunshot residue)?
Man, I just got done watching “The Staircase” on Netflix. I thought that case was bizarre. Michael Peterson doesn’t hold a candle to Alex Murdaugh.
Ah ok, that does seem to narrow it down a bit more than “9mm ammunition was used in the murder, the family has 9mm guns”
Still not what I’d call “beyond reasonable doubt” if I was a juror.’
But the standard is not that every piece of evidence must separately be beyond reasonable doubt. If you have 5 independent pieces of evidence that each indicate a 50% probability that he is guilty, that gets you to 97%. (With the caveat that you do need to think very carefully about whether they are truly independent.)
Yes. The shirt and shorts he was wearing when law enforcement arrived after his 911 call tested positive for gunshot residue (GSR) but not his shoes. Also his hand. Also a blue rain jacket of some kind that the caregiver says Alex had with him but I believe he denies having.
Did Alex Murdaugh have gunshot residue on him the night his wife and son were murdered?
According to an expert, yes.
Yeah this being the key point. I would hope a juror would no be given the 5 x 50% = 97% advice as they are pretty unlikely to be independent.
E.g. If you choose to believe the gun evidence is not damning then it still likely points to a culprit connected to the family, and so the evidence that only the family members knew they’d be there is probably not damning as whoever it was that had access to the guns could have had that information too.
That depends on the nature of the evidence.
Trial attorneys cite spurious probabilities all the time, why would you object to educating a jury with valid probabilisitic arguments?
The question of whether specific pieces of evidence are independent is something that should be argued at trial, and of course the defense should point out the kind of dependence in your example.
But they aren’t allowed to “advise” the jury are they? Only to inform of them of their version of the facts. Isn’t it the judge that advises the jury? (E.g. “don’t call your friends and tell them about what’s being deliberated”) I’d have a problem with the judge or some other theoretically “neutral” officer of the court saying something like that which while technically true is only going encourage them to come to invalid conclusions.
In the OJ Simpson trial, Dershowitz famously told the jury that only 1 in 1000 abusive husbands go on to murder their wives. That’s a (totally spurious) probabilistic argument.
Surely discussing probabilities is (and should be) a large part of what a trial lawyer does.
I don’t know what you mean by “technically true” here. The fact that 5 independent 50% probabilities imply a 97% overall probability is just “true”.
It is not the status quo, but I think everyone in the legal profession should have basic competence in probability and statistics, that there should be a higher requirement for both trial lawyers and judges; and indeed that judges should point out statistical fallacies to juries just as they speak on matters of law. Understanding probability theory is so intrinsic to the judicial system that the elementary principles should not be a matter for argument and the calling of expert witnesses as though it’s all a matter of opinion.
It’s the independent part. More likely than not if you are presented with 5 facts in a trial, each of which has some probability of meaning guilt, they are likely not independent of each other. This is a pretty esoteric point that regularly catches out people who are experts. The average juror would understand this as “5 … 50% probabilities imply a 97% overall probability”.
It’s not hypothetical there was a famous British case where an expert witness quoted the chance of two cot deaths happening in the same family as some number of billions to one. (As in the probability one death squared) And the mother was convicted. It took a long appeal and a statistician to testify that was utter bullshit as they are not independent events (whatever caused the first probably caused the second) for her to be acquitted
I think it’s equally likely that the average juror might fallaciously think that they cannot convict because no single piece of evidence exceeds the “reasonable doubt” standard.
But this example of a horribly stupid assumption of independence does not imply that the right approach is to assume non-independence and to assume that jurors are too stupid to understand the concept. It implies that explaining independence to jurors and explicitly discussing the independence of the various pieces of evidence should be an intrinsic part of the judicial system in order that jurors can draw valid probabilistic conclusions.
Most things are not like DNA. You can’t put a number on how suspicious it is that he invited his wife to the residence the night she was murdered. Or that he lied to the police. Sooner or later, if there is enough smoke, a jury is allowed to conclude there’s a fire.
I’ve never seen a judge give an instruction that mentions statistics or probability. Here is the Washington pattern instruction
WPIC 4.01 Burden Of Proof—Presumption Of Innocence—Reasonable Doubt
[The] [Each] defendant has entered a plea of not guilty. That plea puts in issue every element of [the] [each] crime charged. The [State] [City] [County] is the plaintiff and has the burden of proving each element of [the] [each] crime beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant has no burden of proving that a reasonable doubt exists [as to these elements].
A defendant is presumed innocent. This presumption continues throughout the entire trial unless during your deliberations you find it has been overcome by the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
A reasonable doubt is one for which a reason exists and may arise from the evidence or lack of evidence. It is such a doubt as would exist in the mind of a reasonable person after fully, fairly, and carefully considering all of the evidence or lack of evidence. [If, from such consideration, you have an abiding belief in the truth of the charge, you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt.]
The lawyers spend a lot of time in closing argument talking about it, but the judges don’t say much.
It has nothing to do with putting numerical values on things. What’s important is the concepts.
Given that the entire purpose of a trial is to weigh probabilities, the independence of difference pieces of evidence should be front and center at trial. Specific reasoning about whether two pieces of evidence are independent is naturally part of the adversarial process (with expert witnesses if relevant), but the question of why independence matters is not. All judges should have adequate expertise to advise jurors or such elementary concepts, and to sanction lawyers who willfully use statistical fallacies to lie. I think Dershowitz’s utterly misleading claim about Simpson should have been stamped on by the judge.
Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I don’t think there any standards at all required of jurists. Things like independence, conditioning probabilities on known facts - these are high school level concepts.
Someone on another site says he knows the person who was hired to shoot AM, and that he’s an absolute nutcase and needs to be off the streets.
I’m grateful this family never, to my knowledge, ever entered politics.
THREE HUNDRED GUNS?!? Yikes.
Not really.
“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Same same for guns.
I think that the 300 was a model number or the like, part of the description of a single weapon.