Computer Applications for Handling Legal Evidence, Police Investigation and Case Argumentation

1378 Pages·2012·21.51 MB·English

by  Ephraim Nissan (auth.)

COMPUTERAPPLICATIONSFORHANDLINGLEGALEVIDENCE,
POLICEINVESTIGATIONANDCASEARGUMENTATION
Law, Governance and Technology Series
VOLUME5
SeriesEditors:
POMPEUCASANOVAS,InstituteofLawandTechnology,
UAB,Spain
GIOVANNISARTOR,UniversityofBologna(FacultyofLaw-CIRSFID)and
EuropeanUniversityInstituteofFlorence,Italy
ScientificAdvisoryBoard:
GIANMARIA AJANI, University of Turin, Italy; KEVIN ASHLEY, University of Pittsburgh, USA;
KATIE ATKINSON, University of Liverpool, UK; TREVOR J.M. BENCH-CAPON, University of
Liverpool, UK; V. RICHARDS BENJAMINS, Telefonica, Spain; GUIDO BOELLA, Universita’ degli
Studi di Torino, Italy; JOOST BREUKER, Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands; DANIÈLE
BOURCIER, CERSA, France; TOM BRUCE, Cornell University, USA; NURIA CASELLAS, Institute
of Law and Technology, UAB, Spain; CRISTIANO CASTELFRANCHI, ISTC-CNR, Italy; JACK G.
CONRAD, Thomson Reuters, USA; ROSARIA CONTE, ISTC-CNR, Italy; FRANCESCO CONTINI,
IRSIG-CNR, Italy; JESÚS CONTRERAS, iSOCO, Spain; JOHN DAVIES, British Telecommunications
plc,UK;JOHNDOMINGUE,TheOpenUniversity,UK;JAIMEDELGADO,UniversitatPolitècnicade
Catalunya,Spain;MARCOFABRI,IRSIG-CNR,Italy;DIETERFENSEL,UniversityofInnsbruck,Austria;
ENRICOFRANCESCONI,ITTIG-CNR,Italy;FERNANDOGALINDO,UniversidaddeZaragoza,Spain;
ALDOGANGEMI,ISTC-CNR,Italy;MICHAELGENESERETH,StanfordUniversity,USA;ASUNCIÓN
GÓMEZ-PÉREZ,UniversidadPolitécnicadeMadrid,Spain;THOMASF.GORDON,FraunhoferFOKUS,
Germany;GUIDOGOVERNATORI,NICTA,Australia;GRAHAMGREENLEAF,TheUniversityofNew
South Wales, Australia; MARKO GROBELNIK, Josef Stefan Institute, Slovenia; JAMES HENDLER,
RensselaerPolytechnicInstitute,USA;RINKEHOEKSTRA,UniversiteitvanAmsterdam,TheNetherlands;
ETHAN KATSH, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA; MARC LAURITSEN, Capstone Practice
Systems, Inc., USA; RONALD LEENES, Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society, Tilburg
University, The Netherlands; PHILIP LIETH, Queen’s University Belfast, UK; ARNO LODDER, VU
University Amsterdam, The Netherlands; JOSÉ MANUEL LÓPEZ COBO, Playence, Austria; PIERRE
MAZZEGA, LMTG - UMR5563 CNRS/IRD/UPS, France; MARIE-FRANCINE MOENS, Katholieke
UniversiteitLeuven,Belgium;PABLONORIEGA,IIIA-CSIC,Spain;ANJAOSKAMP,OpenUniversiteit,
TheNetherlands;SASCHAOSSOWSKI,UniversidadReyJuanCarlos,Spain;UGOPAGALLO,Università
degliStudidiTorino,Italy;MONICAPALMIRANI,UniversitàdiBologna,Italy;ABDULPALIWALA,
University of Warwick, UK; ENRIC PLAZA, IIIA - CSIC, Spain; MARTA POBLET, Institute of Law
andTechnology,UAB,Spain;DANIELPOULIN,UniversityofMontreal,Canada;HENRYPRAKKEN,
UniversiteitUtrechtandTheUniversityofGroningen,TheNetherlands;HAIBINQI,HuazhongUniversity
of Science and Technology, P.R. China; DORY REILING, Amsterdam District Court, The Netherlands;
PIER CARLO ROSSI, Italy; EDWINA L. RISSLAND, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA;
COLINRULE,UniversityofMassachusetts,USA;MARCOSCHORLEMMER,IIIA-CSIC,Spain;CARLES
SIERRA, IIIA-CSIC, Spain; MIGEL ANGEL SICILIA, Universidad de Alcalá, Spain; RONALD W.
STAUDT,Chicago-KentCollegeofLaw,USA;RUDISTUDER,KarlsruheInstituteofTechnology,Germany;
DANIELATISCORNIA,ITTIG-CNR,Italy;JOAN-JOSEPVALLBÉ,InstituteofLawandTechnology,UAB,
Spain;TOMVANENGERS,UniversiteitvanAmsterdam,TheNetherlands;FABIOVITALI,Universitàdi
Bologna,Italy;MARY-ANNEWILLIAMS,TheUniversityofTechnology,Sydney,Australia;RADBOUD
WINKELS, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; ADAM WYNER, University of Liverpool, UK;
HAJIMEYOSHINO,MeijiGakuinUniversity,Japan;HAJIMEYOSHINO,MeijiGakuinUniversity,Japan;
JOHNZELEZNIKOW,VictoriaUniversity,Australia
Forfurthervolumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/8808
COMPUTER
APPLICATIONS
FOR HANDLING LEGAL
EVIDENCE, POLICE
INVESTIGATION AND
CASE ARGUMENTATION
by
Ephraim Nissan
Goldsmiths’College,UniversityofLondon,UK
withachapter
bytheVIRTOPSYteam;
achapterbyRichardLeary;
sectionsbyJonathanYovel;
byJohnZeleznikowwithAndrewStranieriandJohn
Yearwood,orwithRichardLearyandWimVandenberghe;
byLouisAkin;andbyJeroenKeppens;
andsectionsco-authored
byS.EyalShimonyandE.Nissan;
byAldoFrancoDragoniandE.Nissan;andby
CarmeloAsaro,E.Nissan,andAntonioA.Martino.
ForewordbyJohnZeleznikow
123
Dr.EphraimNissan
DepartmentofComputing
Goldsmiths’College
UniversityofLondon
London,SE146NW
England
[email protected]
Printedin2volumes
ISBN978-90-481-8989-2 ISBN978-90-481-8990-8(eBook)
DOI10.1007/978-90-481-8990-8
SpringerDordrechtHeidelbergLondonNewYork
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Thisbookisdedicatedtothememoryof
MarcoSomalvico(1941–2002). The
thematicconnectiontothesubjectofthis
paperisprovidedbyhisencouragement–
afteratalkonALIBIwhichasbeinghis
guest,Igaveatmyalmamater,theTechnical
UniversityofMilan–topersistandfurther
developthisdirectionofresearch,whichon
theevidenceofthetalkheconsideredvery
promising.1 WhatIowetoMarcoSomalvico
ismuchmorethanthat.2
1ThenextstepinmyactualinductionintothedisciplineofAI&Lawwasthewarmreception
thatProf.AntonioMartinogaveatalkofmineonALIBIinLisbonin1989.Ihadoriginallybeen
thinkingofitmainlyasanAIplanningsystemforthegenerationofexplanations;thelatteralso
stillisathrivingareaofresearchinartificialintelligence.
2Cf.Nissan(2003i,2007d);Colombetti,Gini,andNissan(2007,2008a,2008b);Nissan,Gini,and
Colombetti(2008[2009],2009a,2009b).

Foreword
Asathirteenyearoldboy,theonlyarticlesIwouldreadwerethesportingcolumns
of Melbourne daily newspapers. My mother was exasperated, how could she get
hersontoreadbooks.Thenshehituponanexcellentidea–maybehewouldread
novelsbySherlockHolmes.
From that day in 1963, I became a voracious reader of stories about Sherlock
Holmes – not only the countless short stories and four long stories, but also any-
thing the author of the Holmes’ stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had written. And
myinterestincludedbooksaboutotherdetectives(suchasPoirotandMaigret)and
relatedmovies.
Butdespitemyinterestindetectivestories,forthenextthirty-sevenyearsIdid
notexhibitanyinterestinforensicscience.3Then,inlate2000,ColinAitken,thena
readerinstatisticsattheUniversityofEdinburgh,offeredmethepositionasresearch
directorofanewcentreforforensicstatisticsandlegalreasoning.Havingaccepted
theexcitingposition,Ineededtoexplorethedomainofforensicstatisticsandlegal
reasoning.Andwhatanexcitingtripitwas.
WhenIarrivedattheUniversityofEdinburgh,IrealisedthatSirArthurConan
Doylehadbeenamedicalstudentthere.OneofhisprofessorswasDr.JosephBell,
a forensic pathologist. Bell was the man who inspired the character of Sherlock
Holmesandsharedmanyqualitieswiththefamousdetective.Thusweopenedthe
Joseph Bell Centre for Forensic Statistics and Legal Reasoning. Its remit was to
analyse, evaluate, interpret and present evidence using the skills in artificial intel-
ligence, law and statistics from the University of Edinburgh, Glasgow Caledonian
UniversityandtheLothianandBordersPoliceForceForensicScienceLaboratory.
Our goal was to develop software for the mathematically sound and legally per-
missibleinterpretationofscientificevidence.Thenweneededtocommunicateand
represent this knowledge to lawyers and juries at the trial stage. This requires
interactions between different agencies – many police forces, forensic science
laboratories,procuratorsfiscal,judges,advocatesandjuries.
The first areas of research at the Joseph Bell Centre for Forensic Statistics and
legalreasoningwere:
3Asopposedtoartificialintelligenceforlaw(AI&Law).
vii
viii Foreword
• the definition and description of legal procedures for building a case based on
evidence;
• the identification and application of mathematically acceptable techniques for
interpretinganddrawingconclusionsfromforensicevidence;
• the determination of the validity of conclusions drawn from analogous data or
fromaparticulardatasample;
• the investigation of the possibility of a common source for several samples of
forensicsignificance;
• the identification and analysis of risk factors as part of the European anti-fraud
initiative;
• the representation and implementation of all the above on a computer in an
accessibleformat;
• thedevelopmentoflegaldecisionsupportsystems.
The construction of such computer systems is a daunting task. Our initial
approach has been to build small-scale knowledge-based systems in specific
domains.Projectsundertakenwere:
(1) thevalueoftraceevidenceinlinkingascenetoasuspect,orascenetoascene;
(2) theassessmentofcross-transferevidence;
(3) protocolsfordeterminationofsamplesizeincriminalinvestigations;
(4) thereliabilityofeyewitnesstestimony;
(5) theexaminationoftrendsinEuropeanfinancialfraud;
(6) theroleofstatisticalevidenceincasesofsuspectedexcessdeathsinamedical
context;
(7) theroleofstatisticalevidenceincasesofsuspectedcreditcardfraud;and
(8) thedistinctionbetweenhomicide,suicideandlawfuldeaths.
But the most daunting question was how could we integrate the vast multitude
ofknowledgerequiredtoundertakesuchagigantictask.Inhismonumentalbook,
ComputerApplicationsforHandlingLegalEvidence,PoliceInvestigation,andCase
Argumentation,Dr.EphraimNissanaddressesthistask.Ratherthaninvestigatebiol-
ogy,chemistry,laworstatistics,Nissanfocusesuponusingcomputertechniquesto
organise the evidence and to enhance the analysis of forensic evidence. But even
thisisamajortask,ascanbeseenbythesizeofhismonograph.
Dr.Nissan’sbookofaboutonethousandthreehundredpagesinvestigateslarge
areas of law, computer science, and some statistics, also addressing topics in
the forensic disciplines, but mostly leaving the significant biological and foren-
sic science topics to other treatises. See however the important Chapter 9 by the
VIRTOPSYteaminBern.AsDr.Nissanstatesinhispreface,hisbookprovidesan
overviewofcomputertechniquesandtoolsforhandlinglegalevidence,policeintel-
ligence,crimeanalysisordetection,andforensictesting,aswellasinvestigatingthe
modellingofargumentationandnarratives.Whilst,overthepastdecade,therehave
beennumerouspublicationsdiscussinghowcomputerscanbeusedtoevaluatelegal
Foreword ix
evidence,Dr.Nissan’smonographisthefirstbooktoattemptthistask.Wearevery
gratefulforthemonumentalbookhehasproduced.
Dr. Nissan commences by investigating how one can reason with evidence. He
looksatbothlogicalandstatisticalmodelsformodellingevidenceandconductsan
in depth investigation of his ALIBI system and Paul Thagard’s work on the Claus
von Bülow Trials, using ECHO, a Coherence Network, and Bayesian networks.
He also informs readers about the Bayesian controversy among legal scholars.
Becoming aware of the arguments put forth by Ron Allen is crucial, for readers
entering the field covered by this book, whether one sides with the Bayesians, or
accepts the critique. It is important to realise the reference-class problem, itself a
sourceofdisagreementamongforensicstatisticians.
Chapter3involvesadetailedinvestigationofargumentation.Argumentationhas
been used in knowledge engineering in two distinct ways; with a focus on the use
of argumentation to structure knowledge (i.e. non-dialectical emphasis) and with
a focus on the use of argumentation to model discourse (i.e. dialectical empha-
sis).Dialecticalapproachestypicallyautomatetheconstructionofanargumentand
counterargumentsnormallywiththeuseofanon-monotoniclogicwhereoperators
aredefinedtoimplementdiscursiveprimitivessuchasattack,rebut,oraccept.
In applications of argumentation to model dialectical reasoning, argumentation
isusedspecificallytomodeldiscourseandonlyindirectlyusedtostructureknowl-
edge. The concepts of conflict and of argument preferences map directly onto a
discursive situation where participants are engaged in dispute. In contrast, many
uses of argumentation for knowledge engineering application do not model dis-
course.Thiscorrespondsmorecloselytoanon-dialecticalperspective.Theanalysis
ofargumentadvancedbyToulmin(1958)doesnotdistinguishdialecticalargumen-
tationfromnon-dialecticalargumentation.Byillustratingthatlogiccanbeviewed
as a kind of generalised jurisprudence rather than as a science, Toulmin (1958)
advancedastructureofrhetoricthatcapturesthelayoutofarguments.Jurisprudence
focuses attention on procedures by which legal claims are advanced and attacked.
Toulmin(1958)soughttoidentifyproceduresbywhichanyclaimisadvanced.He
identified a layout of arguments that was constant regardless of the content of the
argument.
As well as the important argumentation theory of Toulmin, Dr. Nissan also
devotes as much attention to the early work of analysis evidence of John Henry
Wigmore.Wigmoredevelopedagraphicalmethodforevidenceanalysis.Wigmore’s
evidence rules are still used by many U.S. courts. His graphical method is used
by some scholars, such as Dave Schum, Terence Anderson, and William Twining.
Dr.NissanalsoconsiderstheargumentationschemesofDougWalton,KatiaSycara
(Persuader)andTomGordon(Carneades).Chapter5discussesindetailtherelated
topicofnarratives,consideringwhatartificialintelligenceoffersfortheirtreatment,
aswellasrelatedlegalscholarship.
Chapter 4 involves a lengthy examination of appropriate decision support sys-
tems (it concludes with a section about relevance and formalism, by Jonathan
Yovel).AsOatley,EwartandZeleznikow(2006)say‘thereexistsverylittlelitera-
tureaboutpredictivemodelsforpolicedecisionsupport’.Earlyworkincludedthe
x Foreword
useofneuralnetworksforthepredictionofrepeatvictimisation(Oatleyetal.,2002).
This research predicted the occurrence of the next crime, and the expected time
interval for this perpetration. The best neural network models trained on this data
for predicting the next crime achieved an average performance, and it was impos-
sibletofindaneuralnetworkmodelforpredictingthetimeintervalwithouteither
obvious over-training, or extremely poor performance and it is unfortunate that in
that earlier study there was no time to use a dataset where the time intervals were
notleftassinglepointvalues.
Until recently, very few computer systems have attempted to make decisions
using evidence sources. Tillers and Schum (1998) and Schum (1994) discussed
Wigmore’spioneeringapproach(Wigmore,1913)toproofinlitigation.Wigmore’s
methodofdiagrammingthebodyofevidenceinacaseisthecentralmethodbehind
Walton’s (2002) treatise on legal argumentation and evidence. Schum and Tillers
(1991)examinedmarshallinglegalevidence.KadaneandSchum(1996)usedprob-
ability and Wigmore’s diagrams of evidence to analyse the trial of the American
anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.4 There is a controversy about Bayesianism in law.
It should not be ignored. Some applications are less controversial; these are not
aboutthejudicialdecision,oraboutstrengthclaimedfortheevidenceincourt,but
rather for costs/benefits analysis, for the prosecutor to evaluate whether to prose-
cute,andforsubservienttasksthatdonotaffecttheevaluationoftheevidence(e.g.,
statistics inside tools for data mining is unlikely to be controversial among legal
scholars). The real challenge for the application of artificial intelligence to legal
evidence is to produce accounts of plausibility (ones that would take into account
narrativecoherence)thatwouldnotbetheirritantthatBayesianaccountsarewithin
legalscholarshipofevidence.
Various techniques have been used to construct criminal investigation deci-
sion support systems. Statistics has been used to analyse evidence (Aitken, 1995;
Schum, 1994). Areas investigated include DNA testing, fingerprints, footwear and
ballistics.
Chapter 6 involves a very thorough examination of crime data mining. In
investigatingthetopic,Oatley,Ewart,andZeleznikowstated(2006,p.24):
In 2003/2004, approximately 5.9 million crimes were notified to 43 Police Services in
EnglandandWales.Propertycrimessuchastheftandburglaryaccountfor78%ofrecorded
crimesandover430,000(14%)oftheseinvolvetheburglaryofadomesticdwelling.
Once notified, the Police must investigate. Sometimes this will constitute only the
recordingofthedetailsoftheoffencefromthevictim.Moreoften,theinvestigationwill
compriseadetailedexaminationofthecrimescene,thecollectionofforensicmaterialand
recordingofwitnessandvictimstatements.Thislevelofprocessisnotjustreservedfor
seriouscrimes,butisroutinepracticeevenforrelativelyminorones.
Itisapparentthatregardlessofthelevelofinvestigation,asinglerecordedcrimewill
generateaconsiderableamountanddiversityofinformation.Thechallengeisnotonlyto
4CombiningBayesianismandWigmoreChartsisalsowhatisdoneinDawid,Hepler,andSchum’s
(2011)“InferenceNetworks:BayesandWigmore”.AlsoseeHepleretal.(2007).