Journalist: When judges do not maintain strict control over their courtrooms, lawyers often try to influence jury ver...

simi_27@yahoo.com on August 18, 2021

Why not A?? It states that it is KNOWN that in very strict environments verdicts can be unjust or not true as lawyers are not presented with an opportunity to argue their case in such strict environment which weakens the argument that calls for a strict environment because inflammatory language used by lawyers may sway the jury. We all know if there is strong evidence that probably no argument needs to be used other than presenting facts but what about if there is no evidence? There is still a story to tell and witnesses testimony to be discredited to tell the story behind the argument.

Andrew on January 3, 2022

I answered A, could anyone explain why it is incorrect?

Jay-Etter on January 24, 2022

Breaking down the argument:
Conclusion) Whenever lawyers engage in obstructive behaviors there is reasonable doubt whether the jury is correct
P1) obstructive behaviors hinder the jury's effort to reach a correct verdict
Background) lawyers engage in obstructive behavior when the judge is not strict

So to weaken, we want something that's showing this obstructive behavior doesn't actually have an effect on the jury's decision.

A) This is saying even when judges are strict and lawyers do not have obstructive behavior sometimes there is an incorrect verdict. So? This doesn't do anything to our argument because we're looking for something that disproves a correlation between the behavior and incorrect verdicts. Just because incorrect verdicts can occur without obstructive behavior doesn't mean that obstructive behavior doesn't cause incorrect verdicts.
B) Irrelevant
C) We don't care about whether they admit it later, we care about whether or not the jury members are influenced or not by the behavior.
D) This is good, because its saying when there's evidence, obstructive behavior isn't very effective. Which makes us think that if a lawyer engages in this behavior its probably not going to work, and furthermore, if there's evidence then we shouldn't doubt the jury's decision.
E) We're not concerned with bias here.

Hope this helps, feel free to follow up.

MayaM on August 24, 2022

I understanding your explanation, but where I'm falling short is, introducing the information regarding "strong evidence" presents us with a new conditional no? This is what makes this answer choice confusing.

Emil-Kunkin on September 1, 2022

Hi MayaM,

You're right the D presents us with a new conditional, but for a weaken, we do not need to completely disprove the argument, only to weaken it. If D is true, then it is not always reasonable to doubt a verdict when lawyers behave this way. It is only reasonable to do so when there is not strong evidence.