Prosecutor's Fallacy - Defense Attorney's Fallacy

Defense Attorney's Fallacy

Suppose there is a one-in-a-million chance of a match given that the accused is innocent. The prosecutor says this means there is only a one-in-a-million chance of innocence. But if everyone in a community of 10 million people is tested, one expects 10 matches even if all are innocent. The defense fallacy would be to reason that "10 matches were expected, so the accused is no more likely to be guilty than any of the other matches, thus the evidence suggests a 90% chance that the accused is innocent." and "As such, this evidence is irrelevant." The first part of the reasoning would be correct only in the case where there is no further evidence pointing to the defendant. On the second part, Thompson & Schumann wrote that the evidence should still be highly relevant because it "drastically narrows the group of people who are or could have been suspects, while failing to exclude the defendant" (page 171).

Read more about this topic:  Prosecutor's Fallacy

Famous quotes containing the words defense, attorney and/or fallacy:

    ... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.
    Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)

    I always was of opinion that the placing a youth to study with an attorney was rather a prejudice than a help.... The only help a youth wants is to be directed what books to read, and in what order to read them.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    It would be a fallacy to deduce that the slow writer necessarily comes up with superior work. There seems to be scant relationship between prolificness and quality.
    Fannie Hurst (1889–1968)