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Dover Penn ID trial

Dan Beaird said:
I think the smart thing to do would be to have the defense call the witness and severely limit the lines of questioning. Isn't cross examination limited to subjects covered under direct? Maybe I'm thinking of re-direct...I'm no lawyer either, but I've seen one on TV.
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I'm not a lawyer, I haven't played one on TV (I have on the stage, but that's another matter) but this is what I seem to remember.

Direct Examination - you answer questions from the lawyer who called you to the stand, the lawyer who called you can not ask leading questions (unless they are entered as a hostile witness, where the rules of cross examination apply, as Buckingham was). The standards for relevance are a bit heavier too.
Cross - The other lawyer gets to question you, the stands for relevance are pretty lax, really, under cross, we could have asked him if he's ever been convicted of grave-robbing and said it spoke towards the character of the witness.
Re-Direct - The lawyer who calls you gets to ask you more questions, with the same rules as direct examination. This usually means that something has come up in cross that was unexpected and your lawyer wants to ask another question to clear things up.
 
This was my favorite bit:

That was when the judge started asking him to try to explain — um, how should I phrase this? — certain gaps and problems with his testimony.
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When a judge starts grilling a witness about inconsistencies in his testimony, and asks him if he knew he was under oath --- that's quite unusual, isn't it?

Kind of like a big flashing neon sign over the man's head saying "PERJURY".
 
CFLarsen said:
A case of perjury per jury.
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I dunno about perjury, for the reasons stated earlier, but I suspect a couple of school board members may be skating dangerously close to getting slapped with contempt of court charges.
And fortunately, this is a "bench trial"--no jury involved.
 
I am just trying to work out what the judge will say if he says the ID people win. Am finding this task very hard. I mean how do you decide for a side that appears to be not very honest?
 
I'd have to say the quality of the transcripts is superb, the prosecutors are excellent and the judge has a very dry sense of humour. Why isn't this trail televised? I'd pay-to-view it!
 
CFLarsen said:
...starring...?
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Keanu Reeves and Lawrence Fishbourne.


With Carrottop as Dr. Behe

c_top_8x10_red.gif

I'm tellin' ya, it's science"

Incidentially, when the Michael Jackson trial was going on, E Network (I think) did a dramatized reading of the transcripts nightly with actors playing all of he roles in a "courtroom".
 
Ah yes, the "departed hypothesized [SIZE=-1]co-investigator." One of the greatest terms in all of pseudoscience.

~~ Paul

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Perhaps the defence should have got an expert witness statement from Darwin via Schwartz confirming his death-bed conversion?
 
Darat said:
Perhaps the defence should have got an expert witness statement from Darwin via Schwartz confirming his death-bed conversion?
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Why don't they simply put God on the stand? Get the whole thing settled, once and for all?

Or find someone who speaks in tongues....handling snakes, too.
 
I'm surprised when Buckingham (?) took the stand and he started to swear "by Almighty God", there wasn't a rumble of thunder and a voice from above saying "You can leave me out of this!"
 
Not only is this case going on: next Tuesday we have also the vote by the Kansas Board of Education, and 8 of the 9 members of the Dover School Board are up for re-election: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110100875.html

Around town, one billboard erected by the current school board exhorts voters to "support academic freedom."
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Huh? "Academic freedom?" Aren't they the ones who want teachers to read out a statement about ID against the objections of the teachers?
 
Mojo said:
Not only is this case going on: next Tuesday we have also the vote by the Kansas Board of Education,
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Ooooh, I thought it was this Tuesday (i.e. yesterday). I was going to ask if anyone had heard the results. I'll go back to being patient. :boxedin:
 
drkitten said:
Oh, it will definitely be interesting. One of the nice things about courts is that the rules are set up that a witness can't change the subject or wriggle out of a line of questioning that itsn't going his way, unlike a debate. Michael Behe is a brilliant debater, but I suspect he's going to get his ass handed to him, on a plate, with a side of chips.

If you read Behe's expert report, he is presenting the same-old, same-old examples of irreducible complexity, including the flagellum and the blood clotting cascade. If you check out Miller's testimony and expert report (same ACLU site), Miller has already presented a pretty damning analysis that those are not, in fact, irreducibly complex, complete with PowerPoint animations and a a few citations to Science, Nature, and Cell -- apparently (something I didn't know already) blood clotting has been known not to be irreducibly complex since 1969!

So I can see the question from the attorney during cross now. "You testified that with a single factor missing, blood clotting cannot occur. You have heard Dr. Miller's testimony that dolphins are missing such a factor, and that their blood still clots. Do you disagree with Dr. Miller? Do you agree that this fact was published over thirty years ago? Are you incompetent not to know this, or were you perjuring yourself?"
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Cherry-picking "ancient" science is one of their favorite games. Unfortunately, I haven't the time to keep up with all of this, but I hope you are right. The courts do present a good forum for unmasking pap, but, alas, an exceptionally poor forum to decide anything scientific. And, as much as I'd love to hear that last line from counsel, that would only get an immediate, sustained objection from opposing counsel.
 
Upchurch said:
Ooooh, I thought it was this Tuesday (i.e. yesterday). I was going to ask if anyone had heard the results. I'll go back to being patient. :boxedin:
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Have you heard any of the back-story about the Dover board of ed? It is delightful, aggravating and very telling.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Hey Bill, good to see you posting again.

Is there a summary of the back story somewhere?

~~ Paul
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Paul,

Chris Mooney covers it in his article in the premiere issue of Seed magazine. IIRC, he talks about the fundamentalist guy who launched the whole thing, then made such a mess that he had to high-tail it out of town. Considering he got the boot so badly, the court case is a sad joke.

For those who haven't yet seen it, Seed is newly re-launched. The premiere issue is graphically slick and well-written. I think it is a must-read for all skeptics. The magazine's credo tips you off: "Science is culture." This is what Discover (and others) might have been had it not been overrun by the irrational and the panderers.
 
BillHoyt said:
Chris Mooney covers it in his article in the premiere issue of Seed magazine. IIRC, he talks about the fundamentalist guy who launched the whole thing, then made such a mess that he had to high-tail it out of town. Considering he got the boot so badly, the court case is a sad joke.
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I assume the article isn't online. Do you have the fundamentalist guy's name so we can Google him?
 
I'm slowly getting caught up in the transcripts, and I caught this precious exchange early in the cross of Behe:

Q. I couldn't be a mind reader either, correct?

A. Yes, yes, but I'm sure it would be useful.

Q. It would make this exchange go much more quickly.

The Court: You'd have to include me, though.
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Man, I had to do Jury Duty last summer. I would have loved to be on this jury rather than the case I had. Comedy gold.
 
Mojo said:
I assume the article isn't online. Do you have the fundamentalist guy's name so we can Google him?
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I tried earlier. Seed is online (www.seedmagazine.com), but seems to be members-only. I don't have my copy with me right now. Mooney has done some interviews, some of which are on line; maybe Googling him with "ID" or "evolution" might be fruitful?
 
BillHoyt said:
I tried earlier. Seed is online (www.seedmagazine.com), but seems to be members-only. I don't have my copy with me right now. Mooney has done some interviews, some of which are on line; maybe Googling him with "ID" or "evolution" might be fruitful?
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Yeah, I've already tried all sorts of combinations. The nearest I've found is an article saying "the Dover school-board member who drove the policy in question made his conservative Christian motivations clear in widely reported public statements (which he now disputes having made)" which sounds an awful lot like Buckingham to me.
 
Mojo said:
Yeah, I've already tried all sorts of combinations. The nearest I've found is an article saying "the Dover school-board member who drove the policy in question made his conservative Christian motivations clear in widely reported public statements (which he now disputes having made)" which sounds an awful lot like Buckingham to me.
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That sounds familiar. All to.
 
Moose said:
I'm slowly getting caught up in the transcripts, and I caught this precious exchange early in the cross of Behe:



Man, I had to do Jury Duty last summer. I would have loved to be on this jury rather than the case I had. Comedy gold.
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The trial is being (adjucated?) only by a judge, no jury. That's why ID has practically no chance :)
 
petre said:
The trial is being (adjucated?) only by a judge, no jury. That's why ID has practically no chance :)
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Ack! That would be a really good point. I guess juries are sort of hard to get on when there's no jury, huh.

Fly on the ceiling, then?
 
Moose said:
Ack! That would be a really good point. I guess juries are sort of hard to get on when there's no jury, huh.

Fly on the ceiling, then?
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I think we'll have to settle for transcripts for now :)

Which is why it's so irritating that some aren't fully readable. I tried using the exact software that generated it, I even downloaded a free trial of .pdf repair software. Nothing seemed up to the task of drawing out all the text.

So, what are the odds someone isn't properly setting the binary flag before using FTP? :)
 
Is the trial meant to be finishing today? Is there a best guess of when there will be a verdict?
 
Matilda said:
Is the trial meant to be finishing today? Is there a best guess of when there will be a verdict?
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Until someone more familiar with law gets here, you'll have to settle for me.

Juries are advised not to make any evaluation of evidence presented until the end of the trial and deliberations begin. I'm not so sure judges follow the same guideline. I would think the judge is very aware of exactly what aspects of the case need to be considered, and noted them as they came up.

It will take a little time for him to note the important pieces of evidence that he'll apply tests to and to write up his decision on each. I would say if the trial concludes today, the judge would have his notes together and be ready to rule next week, say Tuesday or Wednsday. A lesser case he might have ruled on late Monday, but given the likelyhood of appeal from both sides, I expect he'll try to be as complete as possible in his ruling.

Or maybe he'll be like Judge Judy, take a comercial break, then come right back with a verdict :P
 
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