for kim woods only

We're surrounded by evidence these days, and in criticalthinking we're often looking at the status of evidence.We're all asking what evidence means, and this couldinvolve looking at its credibility. So what is credibility?How can critical thinking help us judge the credibility ofevidence, and how can it help us adjudicate betweenopposing sides?

Credibility is about believability. Is what we're being toldlikely to be true? But how can we judge credibility?

We would use certain criteria to judge this, some ofwhich might not be used, but the whole range of thecriteria can apply to a number of situations.

Criteria are benchmarks against which we judgesomething. A general criterion for judging credibility ismotive. Has the person or organization got a motive or areason that might affect the credibility of that report?

It might well be that the motive is all to the good, thatthe organization or the individual who gives us thatreport just wants to report what they sincerely believe tobe the case.

So let's take the news. The BBCs charter requires it totake a balanced view in all it's news reports. Therefore ithas a motive for trying to be fair and unbiased and not,for example, favoring one political party over another.But this isn't always the case with news reporting.

Privately owned newspapers usually do have a particularpoint of view. They may, thus, have a motive forreporting news in a way that may be biased. Bias is aspecific criterion within motivation.

Historical evidence might well be biased in the directionof, as they often say, the people who win the wars. Itmight well be that advertisers present things in a biasedway.

So for example, if you take a pride in your appearance,you may well be interested in the evidence about beautyproducts given in the ads. But there may be credibilityissues here. Although the beauty ads may well quotescientific findings, they may well be biased, as the aim isto get us to buy the product.

For example in this ad, we're not told what is clinicallyproven, nor are we told how many independent testswere done. For example, was improvement found in 10tests out of 10, or 10 out of 100? However, you mightthink that evidence for medical treatments wouldn't bebiased, but that's not necessarily the case.

Well, I heard of one pharmaceutical company that wastesting a new drug for carcinogenic properties, that iswhether it causes cancer or not. And they decided to testthis on a batch of chickens. In fact, none of the chickenscontracted cancer and this was duly reported. However,what wasn't reported was that a significant number ofthe chickens in this sample contracted heart disease.And that's what we call selective bias.

Another criterion is vested interest. Does the person ororganization providing the evidence have something togain?

This is often used, but we need to be careful when we'reusing it because we need to be sure that we're clear whatan individual or a group of individuals or an organizationhas a vested interest in. So it's not enough to say thisperson or this organization has a vested interest,because what is that interest that they have vested in aparticular claim being accepted?

A vested interest was raised in the controversy over MMR,a vaccine to inoculate babies against measles, mumpsand rubella. In an article in the top medical journal, TheLancet, Dr. Andrew Wakefield suggested that the MMRvaccine increased the risk of autism, and this alarmedmany parents who refused to allow their children to bevaccinated.

Well, it generated real concern amongst parents. Andeven Tony Blair, who was prime minister at the time,didn't have his baby son, Leo, vaccinated against MMR.However, it then came to light that Dr. Wakefield hadreceived money from lawyers fighting alleged MMRdamage cases. He was thus seen to have a vestedinterest, and suddenly, his evidence was less credible.And even The Lancet said that they wouldn't havepublished his report if they'd known about thisconnection with lawyers.

So another criterion of credibility is neutrality.

Here we have evidence from a source where there is noobvious vested interest, no obvious bias, no obviousmotive to distort. And so in that way, neutrality is thepositive, the obvious positive of these other criteria.

It could also be said that doctors are neutral. They seekin their work to be objective. That means that they haveto set aside their personal interests, feelings, andprejudices, and in their diagnosis and recommendationsput the patient's best interest first.

Another and rather different criterion is ability toperceive. It means actually being there, seeing or hearingfor yourself rather than relying on what you're told.

Here we have the classic example of evidence which isbased on someone who was there, someone who saw orheard something.

The police, for example, put great store on evidencegiven by eyewitnesses. However, even this evidence canbe flawed.

Had a long face.

Had a chubbyish face.

I think he was wearing a balaclava over his face.

He had blonde hair. And he had a woolly hat as well. I think he had blonde hair underneath.

And bold blonde hair.

I think it was brown.

He was tall. He was slim, and he had black hair.

He had kind of gingerish-colored hair.

We know from many experiments that psychologistshave done that people will say that they have seensomething and it was not there.

Again, we tried this with our witnesses. There wasnothing to show our robber was armed, and when simplyasked to describe the incident, none of the studentsmentioned a weapon. However, we then asked anothergroup of students if they could describe the weapon therobber was carrying.

You know the attacker, he was carrying something in hishands, some sort of weapon. Can you describe it, what itwas?

Looked like a knife.

I didn't see a knife.

It was quite a big knife.

I didn't see it.

You didn't think he was carrying a weapon?

Not sure.

I think it was quite sharp, possibly a [? foot knife. ?]

So this criterion of ability to see is a very slippery onebecause it depends on all sorts of beliefs about thesituation in which the person who is reporting in this waywas placed.

Another important criterion is expertise. And in ourmodern culture, we tend to place great faith in expertevidence, especially scientific evidence.

Expertise is another criterion that is often used to have tosuggest that particular evidence is strong. Of course, theexpertise has to be relevant. It has to be up to date. It hasto be based on adequate knowledge, adequate training,and it has to be used. In other words, sometimes justgiving a sort of blanket approval to evidence because it'sbased on expertise misses the point that expertise itselfhas to be judged.

Dr. Wakefield had expertise when he produced hisevidence on MMR.

But here was a doctor, somebody who's trained to assessevidence, who is trained to assess medical evidence, andyet here we had an example where the medical evidencewas wildly disputed and is now, indeed, significantlydiscredited.

So in judging the credibility of evidence, it's not just aquestion of ticking boxes and going through the list ofcriteria.

A very good example is the one of Rudolph Hess, whowas one of the commandants of Auschwitz. Whilst hewas in captivity, he wrote an accountant of his time ascommandant of Auschwitz. Now here we have a verygood example of valuable evidence, we might think,because we have somebody who had the ability toperceive. He was there. Day by day-by-day he was there.

He saw the transports coming in. He saw the gaschambers. He saw what was happening.

So here we have Hess, eyewitness evidence, which wewould welcome, which we would say it's worth reading,it's an important historical document. And yet, he hasgot a massive motive to be biased in what he's saying, tosay things were not as bad as people say. So we havethere an obvious clash of criteria.

We've looked at some of the key criteria that can help usjudge the credibility of evidence. Now we're going to askyou to apply your critical thinking skills to look at thecredibility of evidence in the following case study. And todo that, we're going to tell you a story, a love story, and itmeans going right back to the 1920s.

The first World War that ended in 1918 changed theworld forever. It claimed the lives of 10 million youngmen. It deprived 1/2 a generation of young women ofpossible partners, and it changed attitudes.

These young women weren't going to sink passively intospinsterhood. These new women wore their hair short,and their skirts even shorter. They smoked, drank, anddanced, and didn't sit at home waiting to be formallyintroduced to suitable young men.

But these new women were seen by some as a threat to the established order. They were taking men's jobs,undermining morality, and threatening the sanctity ofmarriage. The Daily Telegraph even suggested acampaign to export some of these surplus women to theouter reaches of the British empire. And it was in thesestrange, strange days that Edith Thompson met FreddyBywaters.

Edith Thompson was born on Christmas day 1893 andgrew up in Manor Park. She was intelligent, lively,vivacious, and a high-achieving young professional. Wewould call her a yuppie nowadays.

Freddy was considerably younger than her. He was bornin 1902. He was a merchant seaman.

And he knew Edith Thompson because he knew herbrothers. He went to school with them in also, again inManor Park, and went to see as a young man and oneday turned up on Edith Thompson's doorstep. And therest is history.

Edith was immediately attracted to Freddy's vitality,charm, and good looks. But there was a problem.

Well, Edith Thompson was married when she met FreddyBywaters. She was married in 1916. She was married to aclerk called Percy Thompson.

Freddy became a friend of the family. And in June 1921,he went on holiday with Edith, Percy, and Edith'syounger sister, Avis, to Shanklin in the Isle of Wight. Aviswas keen on Freddy.

The assumption was that this would be the launching ofthe Avis Graydon, Freddy Bywaters relationship. In fact,what actually happened is that one night EdithThompson and Freddy Bywaters declared their love toeach other during the singing of a song called One LittleHour, a song made famous in Britain by JohnMcCormack. That's how it started. On the Isle of Wight,Percy Thompson was unaware of anything going on,suggested to Bywaters that he come and join him andEdith as their lodger in their rather large house at 41Kensington Gardens in Ilford. And that's exactly whathappened.

It was here at 41 Kensington Gardens on June the 27th,Freddy Bywaters 19th birthday, that he and Edith firstbecame lovers.

She took him a breakfast tray upstairs, and then they hadsex. It's as simple as that. From now on, Bywaters was alodger, but he was also the lover of the wife of the house.

For Edith, her world had turned upside down. This wasno mere infatuation, this was the real thing. She adoredFreddy.

Freddy Bywaters was popular with everyone. I metpeople who knew him very well who said he wasextrovert, he was flamboyant, he was generous. Percywas much more stolid, perhaps more solid, but he wasalso a hypochondriac.

He was intensely jealous. He made a fuss wheneversomeone called his wife by her first name and so on.Percy was, I suppose in some ways, rather staid andBywaters was exciting.

So tensions simmered that summer of 1921. Edith wassmitten with Freddy, and increasingly disillusioned withPercy. Freddy was becoming incensed at the way Percytreated his wife, and Percy finally was becomingsuspicious.

It all came to a head on the 1st of August because of abank holiday in 1921 when Freddy and Edith and PercyThompson, it was a beautiful warm day. This happened at the gardens, the 4 Kensington Gardens, and Edithwanted a pen or something and Freddy Bywaters said, I'llget it for you. And Percy Thompson said, you alwayswant someone to run your little errands. And in the end,a row erupted.

As the two Thompsons went back into the house, Freddywas in the garden and Percy struck his wife several times and she fell over. And Bywaters rushed into the houseand stepped between them. He didn't lay a finger onPercy Thompson, but he told him if he ever touched hiswife again, he would have to deal with him. Clearly afterthat, it was not possible for the three of them to cohabitand Bywaters duly left.

For most of the time between September 1921 andSeptember 1922, Freddy was at sea on his ship the P&Oliner, The Morea. But Edith became an expert in P&Ostimetable and wherever The Morea docked, there werealways letters waiting for Freddy. Letters later described,with some distaste, as a passionate correspondence.

Shall we say we'll always be lovers, even though secretones? Or is this great big love a thing we can't control?Dare we say that?

Most of Edith's writing was about her life in Ilford, aboutthe books she had read, the plays she'd seen, and theheroine she had identified with.

They are obviously kind of overwrought, and highlysentimental, romantic, and I can't help feeling that thepoint of the correspondence is to keep Bywaters deeplyinvolved in her London life.

But there were a few passages that were to prove literallyfatal to Edith, passages where she talked about gettingrid of Percy by poisoning him.

She'd also enclosed several cuttings about poisoning inher letters. One was about the attempt to poison a vicar and his family. A second one began, poisoned chocolatessent to university chief. And a third one started, beautifuldancer drugged in Chinese restaurant. So EdithThompson was really into poisoning. And she said she'dput poison in Percy's tea, but he'd complained about thebitter taste. But then she hit on a better idea. Groundglass.

Darling, I was buoyed up with the hope of the light bulb.And I had a lot, big pieces too, and it had no effect. Ithought I would be able to send you that cable, but no.Nothing has happened from it.

The Morea returned to London on September 25. It wasto be Freddy's last day at sea. He and Edith had severalmeetings over the next week. But by far the most crucialof these in the way things turned out, was a meeting onOctober 2nd, in a tea room opposite where she worked inAldersgate.

She says in one of her letters, don't forget what we talkedabout in the tea room. I'll still dare if you do. We don'tknow what that means, but we do know that late thatafternoon in a letter she also says, that do somethingtomorrow night, she says. I knew I will be hurt, but I can'tchange anything. Do something tomorrow night.

But tomorrow night was October 3rd. Edith and Percywere returning home from a night out at the theatre.They were walking along here, Belgrave Road, when ithappened.

Just before-- just before they get to the intersectionwhere Belgrave Road and Kensington Gardens intersect,Percy Thompson is attacked by a man jumping out of the front garden from Ainslie Gardens. Pushes EdithThompson to the side, she falls, hits her head on thecurb, is heard to be screaming, oh don't, oh don't by aneighbor about 30 yards, 20 yards down the road. Thatman is Freddy Bywaters who stabbed and pushed PercyThompson along the pavement, stabbed him a numberof times, and then runs off. Edith Thompson is then seenrunning towards the body, propping it up against thegarden wall. And various people come out into the streetand they see this woman covered in blood screaming, oh no, oh no, oh no.

The police knew they were dealing with a murder, but asEdith was giving nothing away, they had little to go on.Then they got a lucky break when they talked to Percy'sbrother, Richard.

Richard Thompson, who lived the [? Power ?] Road andwho knew undoubtedly about the affair, said to thepolice, I never could understand how my brother couldtolerate Bywaters and this business going on.

Suddenly, the police had a suspect and a motive, and they arrested Freddy and took him to Ilford PoliceStation. When they searched The Morea and found herletters, they had a second suspect, Edith Thompson.They came to trial in December at the Central CriminalCourt, the Old Bailey.

The case against Freddy Bywaters was that he killedPercy Thompson in cold blood by stabbing him. The caseagainst Edith Thompson was rather more complicated,but essentially, it was that she had set Freddy Bywatersup to kill her husband. And if she had, she was equallyguilty in law. As the prosecuting counsel put it, althoughit was his hand that struck the blow, it was her mind thatconceived the crime.

So what was the evidence? The only eyewitnesses to theactual murder were Freddy Bywaters and EdithThompson. Freddy admitted killing Percy, though hedenied he'd intended to kill him. Edith, supportedthroughout by Freddy, denied she had any part in themurder.

But there were also independent witnesses who testifiedto hearing Edith cry out, oh don't, oh don't several times.They also testified to the state of shock she seemed to bein afterwards. And there was also the expert evidence.

When the prosecution read the passages about poisonand ground glass in Edith's letters, they ordered apostmortem on Percy's body. It was carried out by SirBernard Spilsbury, the leading and most respectedauthority of his day. He found neither ground glass norpoison in Percy's body.

In terms of long-term conspiracy, this was not pursued in the end by the prosecution because their ownpathologist, in fact, just said to them, this won't wash.She may have said that she would do these things, but the hard scientific evidence is that she never did. Sothere had to be a kind of intent at leading Bywaters on,this is what they had to prove.

And the evidence the prosecution used to prove this wasEdith's letters.

The prosecution said, and this is a quote, the undoubtedevidence in the letters of a plot to kill the husband. Nowthis, of course, was for the jury to take a view of, but only1/2 the correspondence was submitted. And when thedefense agreed to that, that in retrospect was a terriblemistake.

So the prosecution used selected passages like,remember what we talked to back in the tea room, I'llstill dare if you do, and, do something tomorrow night tosuggest this was evidence of a joint plan to murder Percy.

Another key piece of evidence for the prosecution was the location of the murder.

The judge led the jury to believe that somehow she--there's a sense that she must have led the husband intothis dark corner on the way back from the theatre.

The corner of Belgrave Road and Ainslie Gardens, wherePercy was murdered, was certainly very dark in thosedays. It was also very quiet. A perfect spot in fact, as theprosecution suggested, for a murder. But on the otherhand, Edith and Percy had not gone out of their way.They were simply taking the most direct route homefrom Ilford Station to where they lived in KensingtonGardens.

However, in looking at the evidence and how it'sinterpreted it's important to bear in mind the socialcontext. Edith had clearly offended the morality of hertimes, and the judge, 65-year-old Mr. Justice Shearman,clearly took a dim view of this.

Of course, his notes to himself have survived in theNational Archives in Kew, and he does have sentences inthere that are quite disturbing. For example, whenBywaters and Thompson and the defense talk about agreat love affair going wrong, he writes in his notes, greatlove affair, nonsense. Wholesome disgust, wholesomedisgust. That's his interpretation.

He began his summing up to the jury by saying, I thinkyou will feel disgust at this case, but your feelings ofdisgust will not run away with you.

For the judge to be taking such a strong moral line showsthat he was clearly, shall we say, not very well disposedtowards Mrs. Thompson.

It seems the jury weren't very well disposed to EdithThompson either. The foreman of the jury talked abouthaving to read those disgusting letters to this fellowjurors. How much this disgust influenced the jury, we'llnever know. But the duly returned a verdict of guilty, not only on Freddy Bywaters, but also on Edith Thompson.And as the law demanded in those days, both weresentenced to death by hanging.

In spite of a massive public protest and a petition withover 1 million signatures, the law took its course andFreddy and Edith were hanged on January 9, 1923.Freddy was hanged in Pentonville. He went calmly to hisdeath, but still proclaiming Edith's innocence.

Edith was hanged in Holloway. She fell apart in the daysbefore the execution, and her brown hair had turnedgray. Semi-conscious, but still struggling, she had to be dragged to the scaffold, and there, she had a massivehemorrhage as she died.

It was an execution that traumatized everyone who wasthere. Was she victimized for being one of these newwomen? She worked, she was successful, she wasmarried, but had taken a much younger lover.

I think Edith Thompson was, one could say, at leastpartly she paid the price for daring to step outside of herclass, outside of her milieu, commit adultery. It has beenclaimed that she was hanged for adultery, and I believethat is very largely true.

Edith and Freddy were buried in unmarked graves in thegrounds of the prisons where they were executed. But in1971, Edith's remains were moved here to BrookwoodCemetary in Surrey.

Her grave remained unmarked for over 20 years. But onNovember 13, 1993, an inscription was placed on it withthese words. Sleep on beloved. Her death was a legalformality.

So how credible do you think the evidence was in theThompson Bywaters case? Look at the key criteriaoutlined in Part One and see which ones you think mightapply here and why. And in the final section, Dr. van denBrink-Budgen will provide his analysis of the evidence.

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We've seen the case study on the Thompson andBywaters case, and clearly what we're going to have alook at is how the credibility criteria can inform ourthinking about it. Whether we would want to look at amotive for instance, whether there is expertise that we'reparticularly interested in, whether there is eyewitnessreports. Really whether we can come to any judgment onthis as to what is the most plausible explanation for whathappened. The first thing we're going to look at is wherethe presenter is outside Kensington Gardens.

So tensions simmered that summer of 1921. Edith wassmitten with Freddy and increasingly disillusioned withPercy. Freddy was becoming incensed at the way Percytreated his wife, and Percy finally was becomingsuspicious.

All right, well, straight away we're into problems ofcredibility because we've already got neutrality going outof the window. We've got Edith now very much smittenwith Freddy. We've got Freddy very much taken withEdith. So really the neutrality for them has gone.

They have motives which are going to affect what theyare going to do. And Percy, himself, clearly is not going tolook at this relationship in a neutral way. So alreadywe've left neutrality behind and we're now going to belooking at issues of motive. And specifically, bias and anyvested interests that will come in.

So, by now we've got Freddy on the high seas and Edithwriting letters to him.

For most of the time between September 1921 andSeptember 1922, Freddy was at sea on his ship, the P&Oliner, The Morea. But Edith became an expert in P&Ostimetable, and wherever The Morea docked, there werealways letters waiting for Freddy. Letters later described,with some distaste, as a passionate correspondence.

Letters, as you saw, later took on a massive significance.It's important to note that letters are normally seen as aprimary source, so we would normally take them veryseriously. It's like somebody saying something, they'remaking a point.

So if we have got letters, we would say, well, this is whatthey said. But crucially, clearly we need to look at well,what did the letters mean? Has she got a motive forsaying what she is saying?

Is there, if you like, a biased account? Is there a selectiveaccount? And you would need to consider though it'stheir primary source, the recipient of the letter also hasto be taken into account. And it becomes quite a complexarea for us to do credibility work on this. Though aprimary source, motive, bias come in, in order for us toevaluate the significance of these letters.

Now obviously kind of overwrought and highlysentimental, romantic, I can't help feeling that the pointof the correspondence is to keep Bywaters deeplyinvolved in her London life.

Once again, we can see here with this question of motivewhy was she writing the letters, and why was she writingwhat she wrote? This turns out to be something of greatsignificance, but it's this whole issue of motive that isnicely illustrated here.

Now we move on to the murder itself.

That man was Freddy Bywaters, who stabbed and pushed Percy Thompson along the pavement, stabbedhim a number of times and then runs off. EdithThompson was then seen running towards the bodypropping it up against the garden wall. And variouspeople come out into the street and they see this womancovered in blood screaming, oh no, oh no, oh no.

And hearing Edith calling out. Now this is, I think, moresignificant than perhaps one might realize. Because whatwe again have are eyewitnesses to the aftermath andthey are witnessing something which appears to be awoman in obvious and unfeigned, possibly, distress.

But there were also independent witnesses who testifiedto hearing Edith cry out, oh don't, oh don't several times.They also testified to the state of shock she seemed to bein afterwards.

These were the people that we mentioned before, theeyewitnesses to the aftermath of the murder. They'reindependent in that clearly no one is linking them to themurder. They're not accused of having any vestedinterest here. They didn't have any relationship to any ofthe parties, so their independence is important. And bythe word independence, we would mean clearly here,neutrality.

But what you've got here, crucially, is neutrality linkedwith the ability to perceive. Now if you put those twotogether, normally in a credibility case, you've got twovery powerful criteria. A neutral eyewitness accountnormally counts for something very strong.

So here we have these people rushing out onto thestreet, they are independent, they are neutral, and theycould see Edith Thompson in considerable distress. Andthis, I think, is something that we need to consider. Wehave two, if you like, strong cards in favor of EdithThompson not necessarily thinking that this was going tohappen, that it took her utterly by shocked surprise. Inaddition to the neutral eyewitnesses, we also have,importantly, expert evidence.

Now, again in any examination of the credibility of acase, expert evidence, expertise is seen as a strongcriterion. And here we have someone highly regarded,very highly regarded in his time, and he comes to theexpert judgement that there is no evidence that Percywas poisoned in any way. Now there was no evidence ofground glass, no evidence of the poison that wasreferred to in the letters.

So here we have an interesting clash between expertiseand, if you like, the primary source of the letters. And Iwould have thought in this case expertise, like it so oftendoes in credibility cases, expertise wins the day. It'srelevant expertise, it's very high expertise. It's expertisebased also, this is important to note this, on ability toperceive.

Because what has Bernard Spilsbury done? He's carriedout a postmortem on Percy's body. So ability to perceiveand expertise there are allied in a very powerful way. Andif you start linking that with our neutral eyewitnesses,then the case against Edith, I think at this point, isbeginning to lose credibility.

The prosecution based much of its case upon what Edithhad written in her letters.

The prosecution said there is, and this is a quote, theundoubted evidence in the letters of a plot to kill thehusband.

Now as critical thinkers, you would say, well, we havealready got some doubts. We've been looking at theevidence by applying the credibility criteria. And to saythere is undoubted evidence is much, much too strong.There is evidence. Clearly we wouldn't doubt that thereis evidence which goes in favor of the prosecution's case,but to say there is undoubted evidence really is to ignorethe weakness in the evidence that comes from applyingthe credibility criteria.

Only 1/2 the correspondence were submitted. And when the defense agreed to that, that in retrospect was aterrible mistake.

Now here we have an important point from credibility.We have only part of the evidence. And so in that sense,we have already evidence of bias.

We've got something going on here where it's very muchin the prosecution's interest to submit only those letterswhose passages, whose words incriminate EdithThompson. So the other part of the letters, the other 1/2of the letters which might have been entirely innocent,which might have just dwelt on, oh, I picked flowerstoday or whatever are ignored. So it's deliberate bias,and its deliberate bias which we can see as vestedinterest. The prosecution wants Edith Thompson to befound guilty, and so they select the evidence whichstrongly supports their case and ignore the evidencewhich doesn't.

So the prosecution used selected passages like,remember what we talked about in the tea room, I'll stilldare if you do, and do something tomorrow night, tosuggest this was evidence of a joint plan to murder Percy.

And here we have something crucial that we don't know.When Edith says, remember what we talked about in theteam room, we don't know what they talked about in thetea room. Clearly the prosecution inferred that theytalked about doing away with Percy, but they could havetalked about doing all sorts of things, such as runningaway together, spending more time together, finishing it,whatever it was.

And here we have one of the particular problems of thiscase, that we simply don't have enough evidence. Whenshe says, I'll still dare if you do, we don't know what she'sdaring him to do and what she will dare to do herself. Wehaven't got all the evidence.

We don't know what everybody said. We haven't gotevery expert judgement, perhaps. But all we're lookingfor, all we would normally expect is, what is that mostplausible outcome? What is the most plausible judgmentyou would make? This is what is likely to have happened.

Edith had clearly offended the morality of her times, andthe judge, 65-year-old Mr. I Justice Shearman, clearlytook a dim view of this.

Here we have a break in the normal convention of seeingjudges as impartial, simply administering justice in theway in which the law requires. Clearly, the judge wasbiased against the defendants. And as you saw in hissumming up, he betrayed this bias quite clearly.

What the Thompson-Bywaters case illustrates is that weare very often short of enough information in order tomake a firm decision as to what happened. By applyingthe criteria in this case, we can see that the criteria veryoften clashed with each other and all of you have to do isto work out, well, in the end, which way do the criteriatake us? What is the most plausible judgment that youcould make?

What is the most plausible decision? Were they guilty, orweren't they guilty? Was one of them guilty and the othernot guilty? In the end, it's a decision that you can makeusing the credibility criteria.

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