The Jama legal narrative part II: A foray into concepts of improbability

TLDR: In this paper, the JAMA Model and Narrative Interpretation Patterns are used to illustrate the probability of the Jama murder and inquiry, and to illustrate another kind of probability or improbability, i.e., what is improbable about the Jama story is actually a given.

Abstract: In judicial decision making, the doctrine of chances takes explicitly into account the odds. There is more to forensic statistics, as well as various probabilistic approaches, which taken together form the object of an enduring controversy in the scholarship of legal evidence. In this paper, I reconsider the circumstances of the Jama murder and inquiry (dealt with in Part I of this paper: 'The JAMA Model and Narrative Interpretation Patterns'), to illustrate yet another kind of probability or improbability. What is improbable about the Jama story is actually a given, which contributes in terms of dramatic underlining. In literary theory, concepts of narratives being probable or improbable date back from the eighteenth century, when both prescientific and scientific probability were infiltrating several domains, including law. An understanding of such a backdrop throughout the history of ideas is, I claim, necessary for Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers who may be tempted to apply statistical method...