Your example is a good one—of memory change across a period of two years. From work I’ve done on a family history based on my own recollections, recollections from other persons, and the occasional bit of documentary evidence, I know I don’t have “flawless recall,” but that strikes me as a bit of a straw man. In fact, I will mention, in passing, that I have been favorably impressed, in the course of the project, by the number of decades-old recollections that comport—or very-nearly comport—with surviving documentation. On one or two occasions, an erroneous memory has been interestingly explained. A family member recalls, for instance, that a photograph was taken on a date that a relative moved out of a residence, but the photograph itself is seen to be dated three years before the relative’s departure from that place. At some point, somebody else’s recollection reveals that the photograph was taken on the day a visitor to the residence left it, to go home. The false memory, in other words, included an association with the word “departure.”
It’s a matter of the details of the story-changing. I haven’t read all of Knox’s statements to the investigators and don’t know the dates on which each of them was made. They appear to have been made within a few days of the murder; and at least one of them seems to have included the following false statement, about the man named Lumumba: “I confusedly remember that he killed her [Kercher].”
The utterance of such a false thing, outside, maybe, a literal torture chamber, is depraved.
The utterance of such a false thing, outside, maybe, a literal torture chamber, is depraved.
That may be so!
This is quite different from being a literally perfect indicator of guilt. I’d feel overconfident saying there was a 95% chance I could keep my story straight if accused of murder, never mind in another country and another language.
Part of this may be calibration. 2.00 obviously isn’t even a probability, but even if I assume your 1.00 figure is simply rounded to two decimal places, it would require that less than one person in one hundred who changes their story is actually innocent. I doubt that is the case.
Your example is a good one—of memory change across a period of two years. From work I’ve done on a family history based on my own recollections, recollections from other persons, and the occasional bit of documentary evidence, I know I don’t have “flawless recall,” but that strikes me as a bit of a straw man. In fact, I will mention, in passing, that I have been favorably impressed, in the course of the project, by the number of decades-old recollections that comport—or very-nearly comport—with surviving documentation. On one or two occasions, an erroneous memory has been interestingly explained. A family member recalls, for instance, that a photograph was taken on a date that a relative moved out of a residence, but the photograph itself is seen to be dated three years before the relative’s departure from that place. At some point, somebody else’s recollection reveals that the photograph was taken on the day a visitor to the residence left it, to go home. The false memory, in other words, included an association with the word “departure.”
It’s a matter of the details of the story-changing. I haven’t read all of Knox’s statements to the investigators and don’t know the dates on which each of them was made. They appear to have been made within a few days of the murder; and at least one of them seems to have included the following false statement, about the man named Lumumba: “I confusedly remember that he killed her [Kercher].”
The utterance of such a false thing, outside, maybe, a literal torture chamber, is depraved.
That may be so!
This is quite different from being a literally perfect indicator of guilt. I’d feel overconfident saying there was a 95% chance I could keep my story straight if accused of murder, never mind in another country and another language.
Part of this may be calibration. 2.00 obviously isn’t even a probability, but even if I assume your 1.00 figure is simply rounded to two decimal places, it would require that less than one person in one hundred who changes their story is actually innocent. I doubt that is the case.