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When Are Two Witnesses Better Than One?

Atkinson, David and Peijnenburg, Jeanne (2017) When Are Two Witnesses Better Than One? [Preprint]

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Abstract

Even if two testimonies in a criminal trial are independent, they are not necessarily more trustworthy than one. But if they are independent in the sense that they are screened off from one another by the crime, then two testimonies raise the probability of guilt above the level that one testimony alone could achieve. In fact this screening-off condition can be weakened without changing the conclusion. It is however only a sufficient, not a necessary condition for concluding that two witnesses are better than one. We will discuss two different conditions, each of them necessary as well as sufficient, and we conclude that one of them is slightly better than the other.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Atkinson, David0000-0003-2082-0236
Peijnenburg, Jeanne0000-0001-9768-4979
Keywords: Witnesses; testimonies; probability
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Depositing User: David Atkinson
Date Deposited: 04 Sep 2017 16:17
Last Modified: 04 Sep 2017 16:17
Item ID: 13388
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Date: September 2017
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/13388

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