Andrew L. Urban
Another title could be “You can’t make this stuff up!” And we didn’t. Or you could file it under ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’. We have been inspired by real events to draft these story lines. Sadly, there are no happy endings … yet.
By the reduction of these stories to the bare-bones outlines, we concentrate their key ingredients, much like cooks do to soups and sauces. The purpose is to expose the ingredients that spoil the broth.
12 Gullible Men
The imaginative prosecutor
A man missing from his new yacht overnight is declared murdered by police and they arrest his middle aged wife. The prosecutor takes up the story, telling the jury how exactly she did it; no plausible motive is argued. Although neither the body or a murder weapon is ever found, the prosecutor details how the woman was murdered and how the wife then bundled the corpse into their dinghy, before dumping it into the water. The prosecutor even tells the jury what sort of injuries the man’s body may show. DNA found on the deck of the yacht is declared a ‘red herring’ by the prosecutor. The jury convicts the woman. She is sentenced to 23 years in prison. As the credits roll, police officers congratulate the prosecutor as the smiling judge passes by, waving to them.
Fall Guy
Never mind the alibi
After three adults and two pre-teen boys of a suburban family are found brutally murdered, police spend two years searching unsuccessfully for suspects. Finally, in frustration, they build a hypothetical case to charge the husband of the dead father’s sister. When confronted with the man’s alibi, they scheme to negate it in the jury’s mind, including a distorted covert recording by a prison snitch. But the prosecution cannot prove the accused was at the crime scene, and cannot put forward a motive. In the final scene, after the jury delivers its guilty verdict, the accused stands up and declares “I’m innocent!”
The room that wasn’t there
A room without a view
A much admired sportsman, sport coach, successful developer and generous philanthropist is charged with historical sexual abuse of a minor. The complainant, now a mature woman, is a relative by marriage, who enjoyed his generosity – until it ceased. She makes it clear she would exact revenge; what better than allegations of sexual abuse… Her claims are over 20 years old, a time when she lived in the same household. But in her statements to police she refers to an incident that took place in a room that wasn’t built at the time. A combination of police failures, prosecutorial misconduct and judicial error sends the man to jail and a place on the sexual offenders register. The film is narrated by the lawyer for the accused, ending with a note of hope that the conviction can be quashed due to the presence of that false testimony, as well as contradictory fabricated admissions – and the judge’s false statement to the jury that the accused had “made admissions”. The film ends with the lawyer opening the door to the court, turning back towards the camera and making a positive gesture.
Tracks to hell
Veering off the truth
In the opening scene, a young divorced father is driving along a country road with his three young sons after a Macdonald’s dinner. When he has a coughing fit and temporarily loses consciousness, the car veers off the road and into a dam, where it begins to sink. We cut to a courtroom, where the prosecution is telling the jury that the man, after escaping from the car, had deliberately drowned his children. We cut to an investigative engineer showing how the tracks of the car after it left the road support the father’s claim. As the credits roll, we see the father and his former wife tearfully consoling each other at the boys’ funeral.
***
But now there may be a glimmer of hope for innocents accused of serious crime: the next iteration of AI. Perhaps the sequels to the above will have happy endings.
“We’ve spent the past decade watching LLMs become faster and larger, but not more trustworthy, ” says Adrian Bertino-Clarke, who founded LIA, the Legal Intel AI. “That is unsustainable, and you’d be absolutely right to question it. Where I think the conversation needs reframing is this: The real threat is probabilistic ‘black-box’ AI being used in high-stakes settings without auditability, not the existence of AI as a field. There is a completely different model emerging, which is what my team is building:
AI that must justify every claim
AI that cannot hallucinate without being caught
AI whose reasoning is transparent, inspectable, and evidence-based
AI that is admissible in court because it behaves like an expert witness, not a guess-generator.”
AI doesn’t replace lawyers: it augments them. Faster (hence less costly), more thorough and legally informed argument otherwise out of reach of humans. We’ll report in more detail and depth as soon as we have the relevant information.
What has been presented by Andrew L Urban is more than challenging it demonstrates incompetence of police, judiciary and in particular in Tasmania politicians.
Reading Justice Murphy’s summation on the Chamberlains brings forth primary evidence that was not in my opinion generally made available to the public. Hence public perception was that there had to have been human involvement in the death of Azaria.
This coupled with sensational media reporting such as the religious aspect the meaning of the name Azaria and numerous other allegations left scant room for a jury to have a rational view, let alone give a balanced decision.
If you look at it another way Andrew, as humans we all tend to ‘cherry pick’ a plausible past incident to build and support our case. The law is a great example of that and the greater the research the more is found from histories old examples. Just listen to our everyday politicians who make a living out of ‘cherry picking’ their way through question time in the parliament. Prosecutors I have no doubt are similar creatures. The well-researched ones go on then to become judges and it all gets back to your main theme, “ You can’t make this stuff up”.As human-beings we tend to go along with the in-crowd who usually sound good and in the process disregard the more vulnerable scapegoat who for want of trying is just not up to the more learned ( with the help of other sycophants ) mouthpiece. This is what I see as lawlessness, not law. The public today are demonstrating their angst and disregard at such ‘authoritarianism’ by either protesting or negating their right to vote and one person’s current dispute is followed by another in all parts of the world. We just can’t see it happening to us until it’s too late to remedy the pain. We are spoiled by our advancements today whereas we should be ever so grateful the truth will eventually come forward because of such advancements but we continue to ‘make stuff up’ and forget that we are all born with nothing and we will leave with nothing. That’s my rant and I gauged it all from reading your short stories above. Disregard it if you wish!
The Law as they say is an ass. Reform is needed, but will it happen…….I think not.
Changing the law itself can indeed be slow — sometimes frustratingly so.
But we can influence how the law is practiced.
If we give lawyers, investigators, journalists and courts tools that surface real evidence clearly, reduce bias, and prevent critical information from being overlooked, we can improve outcomes long before legislation catches up. Reform doesn’t only happen through statutes — it happens through better practice, better reasoning, and better tools.