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Poor DC. I think Pi has him there.
Regarding question 4: In this case, the description from the witness had *no* detail about the how the suspect looked (only the clothes). Since the question asks how much detail was given, a failure to give any details means that the ID is unreliable under that factor.
A better way to phrase what question four *should* be getting at is:
1) consider only the details the witness gave in advance, but which were not known by the officers who found the suspect
2) if those details match the suspect, then the ID is more likely to be reliable, and the degree of reliability is proportional to the rareness of those features
Basically, if the witness was able to predict in advance distinguishing features of the suspect that were not part of the “search filter” used by the police, that suggests that the ID is reliable.
Alternatively, if all witness ID details were known to the officers looking for the suspect, then the witness ID is only as reliable as that description is at picking a person out of the set of all potential suspects. So in this case, it might be the population of the city (~10 million), meaning that unless the description on its own only matches about 1 in 10 million people, it’s not likely to be reliable.
I hereby name DC Marvin! (DC comics and Marvel comics reference)
Well, officer, he wore a green helm with a scrub brush on top, with matching green faulds and white sneakers and gloves. But I didn’t get a good look at his face, because it was too dark inside the helmet.
Perhaps you can get some prints from the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
I feel like we’re getting a glimpse of Pi’s teen years…
You heard it, folks. Pi arguments in da’ house! That means the logic is about to get. . .
*dons sunglasses bearing the pi symbol*
. . . circular.
So, was Pi a math major in undergrad before she did her law degree?
Pi looks absurdly satisfied with herself in that last panel.
What twist could wash that smug smile from her face now?! :U
But seriously, shouldn’t “accurate” be interpreted as “precise” here? A witness who can only say that the attacker was “kinda’ tall” could be considered “inaccurate” (i.e. imprecise) because lots of people are kinda’ tall. D.C. should only have to prove that the description is just of the witnesses clothes and that those clothes are very common in the area in order to justify the description as “inaccurate” and therefore questioning the validity of the I.D.
(A better way to explain this would be “accurate like a painting” and “accurate like a rifle.” The first is meaningless here, as D.C. explains, but like a rifle, the description should help you pinpoint a specific individual. If it’s not accurate, you’re firing it down the range and it could hit just about anything.)