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A hybrid formal theory of arguments, stories and criminal evidence

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Abstract

This paper presents a theory of reasoning with evidence in order to determine the facts in a criminal case. The focus is on the process of proof, in which the facts of the case are determined, rather than on related legal issues, such as the admissibility of evidence. In the literature, two approaches to reasoning with evidence can be distinguished, one argument-based and one story-based. In an argument-based approach to reasoning with evidence, the reasons for and against the occurrence of an event, e.g., based on witness testimony, are central. In a story-based approach, evidence is evaluated and interpreted from the perspective of the factual stories as they may have occurred in a case, e.g., as they are defended by the prosecution. In this paper, we argue that both arguments and narratives are relevant and useful in the reasoning with and interpretation of evidence. Therefore, a hybrid approach is proposed and formally developed, doing justice to both the argument-based and the narrative-based perspective. By the formalization of the theory and the associated graphical representations, our proposal is the basis for the design of software developed as a tool to make sense of the evidence in complex cases.

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Notes

  1. A notable exception here are Pardo and Allen (2007), who advocate using stories to explain the evidence.

  2. Examples are CaseMap (http://www.casemap.com; accessed on February 5th, 2010) and Analyst’s Notebook (http://www.i2group.com/products/analysis-product-line/analysts-notebook; accessed on February 5th, 2010).

  3. AVERS stands for Argument Visualization for Evidential Reasoning based on Stories and was specifically developed for crime analysis by van den Braak and Vreeswijk, see van den Braak et al. (2008), van den Braak (2010) and Bex et al. (2007a).

  5. In the current framework, time is not explicitly represented. Rather, it is implicitly assumed that the further in the sequence an event is, the later it takes place.

  6. See Prakken and Sartor (2009) and Gordon and Walton (2009) for discussions on how burdens and standards of proof can be incorporated in this approach.

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Acknowledgments

The research reported in this paper has been performed in the project ‘Making sense of evidence. Software support for crime investigations’, supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) (ToKeN2000, project number 634.000.429).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Argumentation Research Group, School of Computing, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

    Floris J. Bex

  2. Faculty of Law, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Peter J. van Koppen

  3. Faculty of Law, Free University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Peter J. van Koppen

  4. Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Henry Prakken

  5. Department of Law and ICT, Faculty of Law, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Henry Prakken

  6. Department of Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Bart Verheij

Authors
  1. Floris J. Bex
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  2. Peter J. van Koppen
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  3. Henry Prakken
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  4. Bart Verheij
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Correspondence to Floris J. Bex.

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Bex, F.J., van Koppen, P.J., Prakken, H. et al. A hybrid formal theory of arguments, stories and criminal evidence. Artif Intell Law 18, 123–152 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-010-9092-x

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