Conviction by Contradiction: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}

 

The classic whodunit challenges the viewer to solve the crime along with the detective. Since the viewer isn't a professional, the crime has to be set up so that the solution doesn't rely on skills only a professional criminologist would have. These mysteries often work by reducing the crime to a logic puzzle: you solve the mystery by finding the fact that doesn't fit.

 

This gets particularly [[egregious]] when the story contains perfectly good alternative clues, but the flimsy one was chosen as ''The'' Clue.

 

* A "witness" trying to frame a boy for the theft of a pocket knife claims the boy took the knife with his right hand, and put it in his pocket while running away. He is found innocent because he has a cast on his left hand and the knife was found in his left pants pocket (planted there by the "witness") and (according to the answers section at least) it's impossible to put a pocket knife in your left pants pocket with your right hand while running. Leaving aside that Encyclopedia was assuming an impossibility out of a difficult, and highly improbable physical stunt, the mere likelihood of him putting the knife in his left pocket after he'd stopped running never occurred to him. Of course, since the inconsistency here is being used on the defendant's behalf to ''create'' reasonable doubt, it's more valid than most of the other examples on this page.

* The perp claims to have been out of town during the crime, but knows details about some contemporaneous local event. (Because, clearly, he never talks to anyone about local events or reads newspapers)

* A boy blows his fake alibi by tracing a shirt pocket on the wrong side of his chest. This is perfectly understandable, since everyone is accustomed to seeing images of themselves in the mirror, where left and right are flipped.

* A man accused of committing a robbery is being interrogated in the crime scene and claims he has never been there before. Shortly afterward, he says, "When you brought me ''back'' here, did I resist?" to the police officer. Since he couldn't be brought ''back'' if he had never been there before, the man is guilty. First of all, the term "back" doesn't have to mean "return." It can simply indicate distance or location, shown in common phrases such as, "He's from back east." You can also say you're taking someone "back" somewhere if ''you've'' already been there. The all-too-common example would be asking a stranger, "Want to go back to my place?"

*** In the above story, "What Time Is It?", the characters admit that, while not conclusive evidence, this could be used by the guest, a defense attorney, to sow reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors, allowing his client to be acquitted.

** Asimov also wrote a Union Club short story called "No Refuge Could Save", in which a man is identified as a German spy because [[Second Verse Curse|no American could possibly know all four verses of the Star Spangled Banner]].

** In one of Asimov's short mystery stories, the culprit is a Québécois person using a false identity of an American. The detective tricks him into revealing his true identity by asking him to write the word "Montréal", and he writes it with an ''accent aigu'' on the e, whereas someone who only spoke English wouldn't spell it that way.

*** Because it's impossible that the man could have taken French in school and learned the correct way to spell it.

== Newspaper Comics ==

* ''[[Slylock Fox]]'' uses this trope in nearly every strip as Slylock's main way of crime solving.

* Subverted on ''[[Calvin and Hobbes]]'' when Susie is hit with a flurry of snowballs. She goes after Calvin, who has a wheelbarrow with him, and who protests that Susie only has "circumstantial evidence." She clobbers him anyway, and while lying face down in the snow Calvin claims that "you can't get a fair trial in this town."

 

* Another riddle involves the murder of a wealthy man who is killed on a Sunday. Upon being questioned, all of the servants give various alibis: "I was polishing the silver," "I was mowing the grass," etc. The "killer" is the one who claims to have been checking the mail, because mail isn't delivered on Sundays—because apparently, it's impossible to forget that and just check every day out of habit. Or to have forgotten to check on Saturday, and instead get the mail the next day.

** Or to receive a newspaper that is delivered on Sunday, or any mail delivered by others than the Postal Service (how uncommon this is may vary between countries)

 

== Theatre ==

** You can also bypass the whole "logic" aspect and say that you know who did it and that your reasoning is that "[[Crowning Moment of Funny|fat people always lie.]]"

* ''[[Mass Effect]] 2'' has a sidequest where Shepard must use various fragments of messages to identify which of five possibilities is the [[Knowledge Broker|Shadow Broker's]] chief agent on Ilium. The solution comes down to the use of a single contradictory pronoun to give the answer {{spoiler|-'none of the above'}}. Of course you are working for Liara, not the courts, and she's no longer too hung up on the whole 'reasonable doubt' thing.

*** Although, leaving that uncertainty in tact and making Liara overreact like that is almost certainly intentional, seeing as how it drives home that Liara is acting a few krogan testicles short of a quad nowadays.

*** Nyxeris [[Obviously Evil|sure isn't putting much effort into seeming sincere]], either.

* The DOS edutainment game, ''[[Eagle Eye Mysteries]]'' falls victim to this at least once. Although the guilty party usually tells a very blatant lie that makes ''everything'' they say untrustworthy, you usually find other physical evidence too. Not so in one case, where a suspected Moon rock theft hinges almost entirely on the thief calling said object a sedimentary rock, despite the player researching in-game that it is physically impossible for a Moon rock to be sedimentary. No other evidence is found to implicate the suspect. (Because if you don't know your basic geology terms, you are clearly a thief.)

* Played with in the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' series. This trope is literally the core mechanic of the games; your entire job is to find contradictions in witness testimony, either by presenting contradictory evidence or showing that the scene was arranged in such a way as to make their actions impossible. Generally inverted by Phoenix Wright and Apollo Justice (proving a defendant innocent by poking holes in the evidence against them), but played straight by Miles Edgeworth. Naturally, though, the games would be boring if there were no twists; therefore, the trope is averted, subverted, doubly subverted, zig-zagged, and generally tied in knots by pratically every case.

*** The above example isn't strictly ''conviction'' based solely on the contradiction; the contradiction is alleged to be proof that the witness was lying about having been a passenger, which is then used to bring out the ''real'' secret that the witness was trying to hide with that lie.

** That said, it's often subverted. Just because there's a contradiction in a witness's testimony doesn't necessarily mean the witness is lying, or even mistaken. In fact, it's even ''inverted'' a few times; a seeming contradiction in the testimony sometimes results in a reevaluation of the evidence, changing the tone of the case entirely.

* ''[[In the 1st Degree]]'' plays with this trope. While the prosecutor is required to poke holes in Tobin's testimony in order to get first-degree murder, it could be argued that Granger achieved it because Tobin had a total meltdown right there in the courtroom and revealed to much information.

 

 

 

* Parodied in ''[[Moral Orel]]'', in which Orel starts a detective agency. There are two suspects when the contents of Reverend Putty's collection basket is stolen: Joe the [[Devil in Plain Sight]], and a clearly-innocent Susie. Orel ignores the expensive ice cream Joe has bought, and the fact Susie wasn't even in church at the time, and bases his conclusions on which Commandments they broke (or didn't break): Joe honored the Commandment about keeping the Sabbath Holy by refusing to cut his grandfather's lawn, while Susie broke the Commandment of honoring her parents by volunteering at a retirement center instead of going to church like she was told. If she broke one Commandment, then [[Jump Off the Slippery Slope|surely she would be the sort of person to break "Thou shalt not steal".]]

* [[Double Subverted]] by ''[[Beavis and Butthead]]'', of all people. When our heroes are accused of egging Tom Anderson's house, Butt-Head is inspired by a court reporter he saw on TV to try and discredit Anderson's testimony by pointing out that Anderson couldn't clearly identify who threw the rotten eggs at his house. The judge is about to dismiss the case when the prosecutor objects, stating that neither Anderson nor any of the police reports or court documents had ever said the eggs were rotten. He then asks how Butt-Head could have known the eggs were rotten unless he and Beavis were the ones that threw them. Butt-Head has no response, and he and Beavis are sentenced to 500 hours community service.

* In the first Sideshow Bob episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', Bart and Lisa's investigation basically comes down to this. First Lisa realises that Krusty wouldn't have used the Kwik-E-Mart microwave because he has a pacemaker, then that he couldn't have been reading the Springfield Review of Books at the magazine rack because he can't read. Sideshow Bob argued Krusty wasn't one to follow medical warnings and didn't need to be able to read to enjoy the Springfield Review of Books. Finally, in a [[Eureka Moment]], Bart remembers that Homer stepped on the ends of fake Krusty's long shoes, which his feet would not have been long enough to fit, but Sideshow Bob's are.

 

* This is one of the reasons you're never supposed to talk to police officers unless there's a lawyer present. It's quite easy to say something that could be misconstrued as suspicious or incriminating, and police in [[Real Life]] are more diligent than in fiction about using holes in a person's statement as a starting point to single out the suspect(s) who will be investigated more thoroughly via obtaining warrants and gather the real evidence that's used in a conviction. When the police tell you [[Miranda Rights|anything you say "can and will" be used against you]] they aren't kidding. Conventional legal wisdom is to invoke your right to an attorney and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik never speak] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE to police officers] if you think the police suspect you of a crime. The lawyer is there as a witness.

* Police are also more experienced and versed at some of the less well-known cues for discerning between how an innocent person vs. a guilty one will react to being accused of a misdeed and what would constitute suspicious behavior/language:

** Another thing is that if someone is telling the truth they will defend it constantly and they will sound shocked and confused, but if they are lying they will sound angry or embarrassed (i.e. defensive) because they've been found out. A guilty person will make up stories as to what they were doing at the time of the incident, often contradicting themselves. They will usually end up confessing due to their feelings of guilt.

* Also, the "found out as a foreign spy because--" examples are very much [[Truth in Television]] if for no other reason than if you're found out as a spy, you're less likely to end up in front of a jury in a public court with all those pesky "standards of proof" and more likely to end up in a dark hole in a location known to no one with the government of the host country giving you some [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique|harsh interrogation]], and pointing out the holes in their evidence is most certainly going to fall on deaf ears.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Artistic License Law]]

[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]

[[Category:Sublime Rhyme]]

[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]