Abstract
An actual case that made headlines in the Netherlands some time ago: the “Anjumer pensionmoorden” (murders in a boarding house in Anjum, a town in the Netherlands). In this chapter, the case is modelled in the hybrid theory and the various positions in the case (e.g. the Court’s opinion, the defence’s opinion) are analysed using the criteria proposed in Chapters 4 and 5.
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- 1.
Following (Crombag and Israëls, 2008), all names of persons other than Marjan van der E. are fictitious.
- 2.
As was noted before, the information about other testimonies is taken from Crombag and Israëls (Crombag and Israëls, 2008)
- 3.
Under Dutch law, the transportation or concealment of a body with the intent of hiding the fact or cause of death is considered a crime.
- 4.
A club or lump hammer is a is a heavy, one-handed hammer with a double-faced head.
- 5.
Explanations will generally be named as S name , where name is the specific name identifying that explanation.
- 6.
In the rest this section, the explanation [Leo was hit with an angular object, Leo was hit with an angular object ⇒ C Leo has a fractured skull ∧ Leo has brain damage, Leo has a fractured skull ∧ Leo has brain damage ⇒ C Leo dies] from Fig. 6.2 is implicitly assumed. Thus, the explanandum Leo dies follows from any explanation that explains Leo was hit with an angular object.
- 7.
Arguments will generally be named as A name , where name is the name identifying the argument.
- 8.
Recall from the end of Section 5.6 that prediction can be done with the explain speech act: explain ({Leo was hit with an angular object} [Leo was hit with the stone, Leo was hit with the stone ⇒ A Leo was hit with an angular object, Leo was hit with the stone ⇒ C the stone had blood and hair on it]).
- 9.
Formally, the unsupported S stone = {Leo was hit with the stone, g stone } is still in the set of explanations Expl and there are now two versions of S stone . However, for clarity only the newest version (which is supported by Kuilstra) is shown.
- 10.
This is similar to the logic programming principle of negation as failure, according to which failure to derive p can be used to derive ␕p.
- 11.
According to Definition 5.4.2, if an argument based on evidence is overruled (i.e. decisively defeated) then the evidence does not support its conclusion.
- 12.
If we were to contradict the generalization with evidence we would not be arguing for the implausibility, which is established independently from the evidence, but rather for the evidential contradiction (Definition 5.4.5).
- 13.
- 14.
Whilst it is possible to have a discussion about Waanders’ possible motives in the hybrid theory, this will not be elaborated upon in this analysis.
- 15.
This is the “gap-filling” function of stories that has been mentioned in Section 4.2, where gaps in the evidence (evidential gaps) are filled with events that fit the story.
- 16.
Here the generalization is rendered in its case-specific form (cf. Section 2.1.3).
- 17.
Note that the present dialogue game does not include a “refine” speech act and that hence a new explanation has to be given which incorporates the refined generalization.
- 18.
Formally, this argument is a reason for valid(g act_on_urge (x, y, c)), where g act_on_urge (x, y, c): x afraid y might tell police about crime c ⇒ C x wanted to kill y. Through the reason in Definition 5.1.3 we can infer the causal generalization Marjan afraid Leo might tell police about forms ⇒ C Marjan wanted to kill Leo.
- 19.
Recall from the example of the dialogue game in Section 5.6 that this way of first predicting new observables and then contradicting them is not possible in the formal dialogue game.
- 20.
Here, the evidential support of the story is improved because evidence (from the case file) is given for valid(g suicide ). The causal generalization g suicide is inferred through an intermediate conclusion in the argument Leo had tried to kill himself with drugs before.
- 21.
This is referenced to in (Crombag and Israëls, 2008) but no further details are given so I do not know how serious Leo’s previous suicide attempts were.
- 22.
Even if the evidential support of the two explanations is roughly the same, S addict is either more contradicted or less plausible because of the attack on g dose .
- 23.
The implausibility of a story that Marjan did not know anything about the cannabis can be shown by, for example, using causal generalizations about people’s knowledge of the contents of their barns and generalizations about the smell and energy consumption of a cannabis-growing operation to predict that Marjan must have seen something and subsequently attacking this explanation (cf. Fig. 6.37 for a similar line of reasoning).
- 24.
This way of predictive reasoning was illustrated in Fig. 6.37 and can be applied similarly to a case where Marjan and Waanders must have noticed something the following day.
- 25.
One reason for this is that this case study is a simplified version which does not take into account the murder of Herre Sturmans.
- 26.
Interested readers are referred to Kadane and Schum’s (1996) case study of the Sacco and Vanzetti case, in which issues such as witness and expert credibility are extensively discussed using (Wigmorean) argumentation.
References
Anderson, T.J., Schum, D.A. and Twining, W.L. (2005) Analysis of Evidence, 2nd edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Crombag, H.F.M. and Israëls, H. (2008) Moord in Anjum – Te veel niet gestelde vragen, Boom Juridische Uitgevers, Den Haag.
Wagenaar, W.A., Koppen, P.J. van and Crombag, H.F.M. (1993) Anchored Narratives: The Psychology of Criminal Evidence, St. Martin’s Press, New York (New York).
Dung, P.M. (1995) On the acceptability of arguments and its fundamental role in nonmonotonic reasoning, logic programming and n – person games. Artificial Intelligence 77:2, 321–357.
Kadane, J.B. and Schum, D.A. (1996) A Probabilistic Analysis of the Sacco and Vanzetti Evidence, Wiley, New York (New York).
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Bex, F.J. (2011). Case Study: Murder in Anjum. In: Arguments, Stories and Criminal Evidence. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 92. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0140-3_6
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