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From: Jasper
Date: 6/10/03
Time: 3:27:42 PM
Remote Name: 68.73.197.225
Kari,
Just read an interesting article in Discover. It’s about a phenomenon called the Bruner-Potter interface. It’s a lot like the Primacy Effect in which people tend to believe the first explanation they get to a mystery that makes sense to them and have a hell of at time changing that believe in light of subsequent information. The Bruner-Potter interface explains why that happens in terms of how the brain is hard wired.
Partial information gives you a “fuzzy” picture of reality. If you see a pattern in that fuzzy picture that makes sense to you the natural tendency is to accept it. But if you refuse to wed yourself to your first idea, on principle, you can avoid the trap and subsequent information might allow you to see what’s really there.
As you so wisely pointed out, we don’t have enough information yet to know whether Peterson is guilty or innocent. The same thing was true in the Simpson case until well into the criminal trial. It was also true in the Ramsey case and the Blake case.
I stopped watching Court TV when I started to see case after case in which the police and prosecutors made early judgments and proceeded to cherry-pick their evidence accordingly. I have no doubt that some convicted defendants were innocent. I have some serious doubts about some who were set free because the police and prosecutors did such a poor job of gathering evidence to support their first idea of who was guilty.
The old “rush to judgment” bugaboo seems to be the most common element in all of the cases where I was not convinced of the defendant’s guilt or innocence. Police ignored suspects other than the ones they first believed where guilty. They fudged evidence and lied in court. Prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence, presented tainted evidence and allowed perjured testimony. Sometimes they got caught and the defendant was set free. Sometimes the defendant may have been guilty as sin but the investigation and prosecution where so clearly flawed that the jury had no choice but to acquit.
If we could figure out how to deal with the rush to judgment issue I believe that a lot of other issues involving miscarriages of justice would go away. –Jasper