There is a joke I love that illustrates the concept:
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client was nowhere near the scene of the murder, he didn't mean to pull the trigger, and that son-of-a-bitch had it coming!"
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client was nowhere near the scene of the murder, he didn't mean to pull the trigger, and that son-of-a-bitch had it coming!"
I think the honest version of this kind of argument is helpful in some cases though. Not everybody agrees on the same set of the facts, and sometimes the conclusion one is arguing for is true regardless.
But under US criminal the defense doesn’t have to do anything, the entire burden is on the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that: 1) a criminal act happened, 2) the defendant committed the act and 3) defendant had intent to commit the crime.
Naturally opening/closing arguments actually sound very much like your joke…the government can’t prove a crime happened; if they can they can’t prove my client committed the act; and if they can they can’t prove my client intended to commit the act.
It sounds funny, but logically it makes a lot of sense to say things like we don’t need to a get to the question of if the defendant committed the crime because the government can’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt a crime was committed (e.g. no body in a murder case).
The intern had no write access to the production database, he didn't mean to do the commit, and our network engineers had it coming?
void *p = NULL;
int i = *p / 0;(...when presented with a line in the script that randomly hangs the server.)
There is X probability the client was nowhere near the scene of the murder, and Y probability he didn't mean to pull the trigger
That way these are not exclusive and the contradiction disappears. Now suppose the client is convicted because X is too high, years later a hidden variable is revealed that reduces the probability to zero. He is released from jail, but another hidden variable appears that increases Y to 100%.
There should also be a probability for unknown unknowns, when a fair coin falls sideways.
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300192377/it-was-long-ti...
"Didn't mean to pull the trigger" does not imply the defendant could pull the trigger.
1. The accused was nowhere near the scene of the murder
2. The accused was at the scene of the murder, and in fact committed the murder, but on accident
3. The accused committed the murder on purpose, because the victim had it coming.