Yesterday's class was intense. I think everyone can, to whatever extent, agree that everyone was frustrated. We all wanted to know the truth. We all wanted to know who's guilty. We all wanted to know what happened. We were all focused on finding out motives and reasons for this crime. We all wanted to analyze and scrutinize every single detail down to the color of the robes that the corpse was wearing. I think, although it might have been briefly mentioned, how do we know that any of these are objective? I can bet if we had continued to discuss and process the story we could have found reasons for the narrator to lie and to tell the truth. We all could have found losses and gains for each individual involved. How did our own points of view affect our interpretations of the narrator and of how reliable he or she was? And how do we define truth? Is truth based on your experience of a situation? Research shows that memory errors are rather common specially in high stress situations, like being a witness to a crime or trauma. So, how are we defining truth? Is truth really objective or (at least partially) subjective? If it's subjective... then what? Do we trust our own personal experiences and memories in order to be objective? What if others experience the same exact thing or event/experience totally differently. Do we need to put our perspective last on the list when doing this? Then what does that mean for research? If we rely on science to be objective what does this mean for the researchers interpretations and implications and limits. What about how they came up with the research questions and what possible perspectives lies behind that. How much do we trust the scholarly literature out there? Do we assume that these authors are objective, unbiased, and unprejudiced scientist? Can we, as humans, ever really be unbiased unprejudiced and totally objective? If this can be said about science, what could be said about the police departments or juries? These people aren't scholars or Doctorates. They may not have the knowledge that comes from being in academia. So are these institutions really just or fair? Do we really assume that "justice" is served? Can we walk away feeling secure and safe? I think it's safe to say that at the very least improvements could be made. So then what happens with our criminal justice system? How are our perspectives shaping our opinions on or about the necessary course of action? Do we believe this action is necessary? Even though it's flawed that doesn't mean everyone will think it needs to be fixed... Where do we begin to even tackle all of this? How can we start to make progress? How can we formulate answers to all of these questions?
Boy, oh boy...
P.S: on a less philosophical note: have a relaxing weekend everyone!
21 comments:
After the class, I did understand why professor Waterston and Professor Reitz told me once to keep my philosophical critique of truth/fairness/justice until "In a Grove" assignment. That was so interesting to follow our interpretations and analyzing of words in each testimony. We all have different opinion about each testimony. Most of us did believe that the wife has killed her husband. Why? The words of Martin Luther King immediately come to my mind. "The truth shall set you free". Who was set free? The only concrete fact is a dead body!
People think their own beliefs and aspirations about the way things happened. I believed that my opinion was fair, correct, and true. Every evidence I've found in the text made me think that she was a killer. Hypothetically, my belief is right, which means that the punishment suppose to find her. What about Kevin? He thought that the burglar killed him. He also thought that his version is just, fair and right.
Now, please think about the adversarial system. The problem is that people do not agree on what is fair, just, or correct. Trial procedure will be heavily influenced by the circumstances surrounding any particular case. It is based on and what arguments or issues both sides will choose to emphasize. For me, the biggest evidence that she wanted him dead. How did she disappeared from the scene? Why did she disappeared? For Kevin, it might be robber's criminal background, his testimony, and his attitude. In both cases, we are loosing. That is not enough to prove any of us wrong. Lauren mentioned that everything is very uncertain.
Imagine if that would be a real case? Would both of us be happy about the decision of the judge? Is any decision taken by judge can be considered fair and just? Is the right person was set free?
Here is a link to another situation: http://www.wnd.com/2014/08/new-jersey-justice-prison-for-telling-truth/
Young woman bought a gun to defend her family because she was single mother. She did have a license to have that. Unfortunately, she decided to travel with that gun to another state. This state doesn’t recognize the weapon permits of other states, and she was handcuffed, shackled and jailed. Now, she is facing three years in prison for carrying a gun. Who is right/fair? Is that right/fair to put a single mother to jail and to leave her children without parents? Is that justice?
I definitely would agree with your point of view, Marina. What others may consider just and fair may not hold true for a different set of people with a different cultural background. As we were analyzing "In A Grove," we noticed that the cultural setting of the story had an enormous impact on the crimes themselves. Take Takehiko for example. Takehiko killed himself because he could not "stand the idea" that his wife wanted him dead. However, if we look at this "fact" in the cultural sphere of a Japanese feudalist culture, one can see that Takehiko stated he killed himself because that was considered sacred and honorable for a samurai.
Another issue which Monica touched upon in class is the terrible weight which is put upon eye-witness testimony in the United States adversarial system. As we see in "In A Grove," everyone's eye-witness testimony seemed to differ greatly. This is a great issue we are dealing with as a country. Take the case of Ronald Cotton. Jennifer Thompson was raped by a man for a significant period of time. One would reasonably assume that she would be able to pick this man out of a line-up. However, she chose Ronald Cotton who was not her real rapist. This case is just one of many which proves the unreliability of eye-witness testimony. I think this point is proven in the words of "In A Grove." It seems that very little is objective. If we look at our adversarial system as being made subjectively by those who created it, could we honestly say that we feel justice is served? I think this is a question we would have to ask Ronald Cotton about.
Oh my goodness. Do not start me on eye witness testimony. The first research study I worked on was a three years in the running grant on the effects of administrator knowledge on line-up selection, the study had 3 experiments each with close to 30 conditions. It was amazing, but let me just say that to a jury eye witnesses are the most convincing type of evidence. It is the type of evidence most easy doctored, changed, and biased. What is worse is that the eye witness doesn't think they are wrong. They are not purposely ruining an innocent persons life. They think they are right and that the person is guilty. Take Ronald Cotton for example: Jennifer Thompson saw and still sees (as of the last interview I've seen of her) Ronald Cottons face in nightmares of the rape, even after he was proven innocent and the real rapist was caught. Dr. Margaret Kovera is actually close with both of them, having been involved in the case closely. The three of them have done many projects together, Dr. Kovera tells me about the first time they were all together: how uncomfortable it was for both Jennifer and Ronald. Neither trusted the other and they both feared each others reactions. Interestingly enough, they are close friends now and do a lot of eye witness identification panels and conferences talking about the dangers of placing to much importance on eye witness testimonies.
I could talk for hours about this topic, so I'm just gonna stop here...
Very thought-provoking questions Monica!
What Lauren and Sydney mentioned about Ronald Cotton’s case really underscores the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, which might be caused by many different reasons: sometimes honor/reputation/self-preservation are more important than telling the truth, sometimes cognitive dissonance takes place, and like Monica said, memory errors are common in high-stress situations. How much of our level headed objectiveness is preserved in the face of emotionally charged scenarios? And how does this very basic fact of the human mind then affect verdicts in court rooms? Who is believed when testimonies conflict?
I think the central concerns of “In a Grove” map out nicely into the world of eyewitness testimony, jury decision making and of truth determination in the adversarial system in general. How do we accommodate different –and even conflicting- accounts and perspectives in a criminal case? How much do impressions skew a jury member’s perceptions of the defendant? Is the accused less liable to be believed because he is poor/delinquent/of low social status/minority race? I think we pay a heavy price for a jury system when sometimes jury members arrive at wrong conclusions and sentence innocent men and women. But given that the jury system has been around for so long, does that mean it is not feasible/possible to find an alternative? Dispassionate as they may seem jury members are susceptible to their own biases and prejudices as well. Is there any way to overcome this? Maybe someone can weigh in on this. (12 Angry Men is an excellent movie to watch on this topic of jury deliberations). When we were discussing “In a Grove” it seemed like we were 13 excited people, fiercely defending our points of view. Imagine if this were a real case and the decision to sentence a life was in our hands.
You bring up a really interesting point about researchers Monica. It reminded me of what the late Senator Daniel P. Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Social scientists however have their jobs cut out for them, since human behavior in its totality cannot be easily distilled to numbers. Interpretation is a key element and it is for this reason that Moynihan did not look favorably upon the social sciences because he believed that “social science is rarely dispassionate, and social scientists are frequently caught up in the politics which their work necessarily involves…The pronounced ‘liberal’ orientation of sociology, psychology, political science and similar fields is well established.”
Thank you, Monica, for reminding me of a question that we usually ask during the "In a Grove" discussion that we forgot about: how do your own biases shape your interpretation of what happened in that grove? Take a moment to think about what happened to make that body dead. Once you have a name, think about why YOU think that, what assumptions/preconceptions are you bringing to the story?
Online search for answer did not help. I tried a lot. However, that was something on Wikipedia (do not hate me) to support our Thursday's judgment. Please think about that:
"Contrary to what some foreign-language versions of the story may imply, Masago does not confess to the police. This is clear in the Japanese version of the text. The title of this section is:「清水寺に来れる女の懺悔」(kiyomizu-dera ni kitareru onna no zange, translated in Giles as "The Confession of the Woman Visitor to Kiyomizudera Temple") The word 懺悔 (zange) is often translated as "confession", but the word also has heavy religious connotations, similar to "repentance" or "penitence". Although it can mean "to confess to other people", it almost always means "to confess to Buddha/God". Contrast this with Tajōmaru's confession to the police, referred to as 白状 (hakujō) in the text. This raises the question: The woman's story seems highly unlikely, but why would she lie to Buddha and ask him to forgive her for a crime that she didn't commit? Without this important detail, we could be led to believe that Masago was lying to the police in an effort to save face. Jay Rubin translated the title to "Penitent Confession of a Woman in the Kiyomizu Temple".
How important is to know the language and cultural background to analyze the truth????? Are we actually able to fully persue social justice without knowing the cultural background? It must be the most difficult in the USA where almost everyone is coming from different point of view.
And Marina, see, so interesting. You raise this question about language/translation and truth as someone who lives/studies in a different language than your native one. How is your perspective to the "truth" of this story shaped by your understanding of the slipperiness of language?
Marina's comment brings up something I thought long and hard about when reading this piece. I did notice that the wife was confessing in a temple. An act that as someone who grew up in a catholic home, I know all too well. Your question was why would she confess to buddha (or in feudalistic Japan even more likely, her ancestors as per shintoism) if she did not commit the crime. I think there is no doubt that every character in the story blames what has transpired on the wife, she was in some way culturally or legally culpable in all stories. Growing up in a catholic house confession is not a rare topic. I know from my own observations (this in no way is an ultimate truth) that people "sin' all the time. They are usually small sins, and the average person does not keep track of every transgression. For that reason, most people will only confess to the big things they did, making the sins seem even worse or more severe than they were to make up for all the little transgressions they had since last confession. I thought of this a as a possible explanation for why Masago could have confessed to the physical murder if she had not actually done it. Again, this is just a possibility that popped in my mind thinking of my own (limited I might add) experience with confession and penitence. I have no proof within the article or any inside knowledge on if that is a common practice else where, but it is at least something to consider.
I think for sure in her perception she was the cause of her husbands death whether or not she was the one that put the "sharp object" in his chest. In a state of remorse, I don't see it as unlikely for her to confess to the actual murder. Just think of all the people who have lost loved ones to tragic accidents that claim it is somehow their fault. "If I had only done this....If I had stopped this....etc." I mean she very well could be the murderer, but I find her confession to be just as suspect as the others."
To answer some of the questions raised in the previous comments, it may be true that most of our answer to this case was not objective, and I think this is the case for various reasons, some being us being provided with scarce evidence and a second source of information (this case is an account that is being told by a person who did not experience the event directly, so we do not know how much bias from the author is involve in this story). We are not aware of the time frame between the crime and the confession made by both Tajomaru and Masago. So it is absolutely right for us to come up to different conclusions, when it comes to decide whom to hold accountable of the murder.
In regards to finding the truth, the truth would require us to recreate the exact scenarios with the same people and at that exact moment, which I think is impossible to do. Given this, we will never be able to find the truth. However, we can respond effectively to this crime by punishing the responsible party based on the evidence presented.
I feel like we are jumping away from other important factors in the story just to focus in finding the murderer of the husband. Even if Tajomaru was not the murderer of Kanazawa na Takehiko, to some extent he can still be held accountable for the crimes that took place that day. For the reason being, some of the preliminary steps that he took led to the death of Mr. Takehiko (maybe murder is not the right crime in this case). His crime was well premeditated and he took some actions towards its execution. (For my criminal justice major classmates, I am sure that you are aware of Mens Rea and Actus Reus). From this point on, we can already determine that his Mens Rea or state of mind was already focused in killing Takehiko. In Tajomaru’s confession, one of the line reads, “So, I made up my mind to capture her, and do my best not to kill him. But it’s out of the question on the Yamashina Stage road…” (I would like to know what you guys think of this sentence)
Let not forget that in an adversarial system, the decision is not only made based on what is presented as evidence of the case. They are well examined. The adversarial tradition is only a small portion a whole legal system. I am sure that, if this case were to be tried in an American court, the authenticity of Tajomaru’s confession would be question. For his confession was not voluntarily made.
Another question to find out is that, can a confession made at a temple be used as evidence against someone in a criminal court?
Very interesting discussion students! I second Dr. Reitz's question, "How do your biases play a role in your interpretation of The Grove?" and ask you to apply it your agencies. Marina and Sydney I appreciate your exploration into the cultural and religious context of the woman's "confession." What role do our cultural contexts play in our interpretation of "who done it?" in The Grove and in our agencies?
As Monica stated it's difficult to control for the inherent bias in research. What we can do is be aware of our own bias. How does bias influence our interactions with people we are working to support? What biases do we have of the people we are working with at our agencies? How does the structure of the interaction perpetuate or mitigate this bias? For example, eligibility criteria for the service, location, room set up, time limit, whether you go to the person or they come to you, is the person mandated vs. referred....?
I love that Kevin "English Major" Lwongo has pointed our attention to a specific line in the story! Yes, indeed, what does "it’s out of the question on the Yamashina Stage road" mean and how does that provide context for understanding what happened? And commenters, please do answer Professor Rose's (and my) question about your own biases. This is a great chance to begin important work of self-reflection in terms of the story AND in terms of your agency.
I regret waiting so long to write on the blog but I have read everything and love all that has been said. We all have curious minds.
Marina I love the fact that you explored the other versions out there of this tale. I do feel there are some cultural roles and biases that we have. Placing the blame on the woman was something that was brought up during class (maybe it was Sydney)anyways, someone mentioned how in each version of the tale the wife is to blame? Why does it matter that she confessed of her "sins" in the temple. There are strong gender roles displayed throughout the story. I am not too familiar with Japanese culture, I feel as though everyone is lying.
Having just started at my placement I do not have any strong biases towards anyone. I simply know the clients have "barriers". The vague words and descriptions have left me extremely curious and confused. I am not sure which groups of individuals I work with, why they are there. I have some questions that need to be answered.
My goodness, I am (i think) the first to admit that I'm totally biased. I'm the first to see race/gender/ethnicity/class in everything. I'm the first to react to a marginalized person being blamed ... I joke around ALL the time how I would never get picked for a jury because of this. I think culture is extremely influential and like Bekah said the story seems to allow for the "angry women" stereotype to arise when looking at the wife's character. I also think that this ties in directly with research... don't we work with populations we're interested in... doesn't this (as Professor Fisher mentioned) perpetuate our bias? But is that as problematic as it sounds if we're working with marginalized populations?
I almost wanna take my "wife is guilty" vote back.... It's weird to use bias without a negative connotation, but I think it's important to recognize how much research is really affected and what this means not only for academia but for us a readers.
I think a bias we may all have but have not really discussed was touched upon in Kevin's comment. Kevin began to discuss the notion of mens rea. I believe as John Jay students we look at crimes in a certain light. Much like Kevin, as I was reading the text and evaluating who was the "murderer," mens rea led me directly to Masago. She was highly culpable under the standard of mens rea. She wanted her husband to die in most all of the accounts. This definitely leads me to believe that she has a guilty mind. However, I would not say that she should be charged with first degree murder. The highest charge I would give her would be negligable homicide as she did not premeditate the murder and it was a sudden and rash decision as a result of the condition she was in while in the grove. I believe this is also a bias that I have developed from being a student in John Jay.
I also believe that my United States cultural background added to my notion that the wife did it. I'm sure everyone has at one point or another watched a CSI off-shoot or an episode of Criminal Minds. In these shows, whenever a husband is murdered, it always seems that the wife looks like the most guilty party. I believe this may have influenced my automatic assumption that the wife did it. Sorry Masago!
As for Professor Rose's inquiry, I am unsure as to how my biases effect the population I am working with at CJA. I do feel that there is a certain level of bias within the system that we, the CJA employees, are somehow superior to the defendants. However, I do not agree with this. Most within the agency seem to hold the opinion that the defendants are mostly disrespectful. Thus far, I have been greated with excellent manners and many thanks...for the most part. I believe this could be, as Monica stated, a "good" bias. As a John Jay student, I study Forensic Psychology. I am constantly reading material on the victimization of those defendants with mental health concerns and I find it quite disturbing. This could lead me to look for the positive in my clients rather than the negative.
With regards to Professor Reitz's question, the work I do at Pathways is not client-to-client oriented so I feel I am rather insulated from settings in which my personal biases can affect my conduct. I am interacting with data more than I am with people. But nevertheless, the questions that Professor Rose asked made me realize that Pathways is indeed guided by certain assumptions. One being that education is one of the best tools for an inmate to gain a better footing in society once he is released. That is indeed true but there are other things a recently released inmate needs. In one phone call that Pathways made to a local reentry team, we were made aware of how disorienting release can be for someone who is used to regimented living; the sheer “freedom” was strange and after the phone call, social skills and counseling/mentoring was added to the list of inmate needs that we can work on. Also, one of the things that I realized was that inmates themselves are not always invested in getting an education. Upon release, some say they have family waiting for them (usually children) and cannot commit the time and effort to educating themselves, and in such cases, we can only comply with their wishes.
Civil liberties groups have filed a federal class-action lawsuit charging that inmates at the jail in Scott County, Miss., are “indefinitely detained” and denied counsel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/us/in-a-mississippi-jail-convictions-and-counsel-appear-optional.html?
Check out the bias at play here...who gets due process?
Thanks all for a great discussion. I also appreciate Marina's "lost in translation" point.
I also appreciate the discussion in the broadest sense that it forces us to take a really hard look at our own selves, at the ways in which perception is not just SHAPED but becomes NORMALIZED. So often we assume the "truth" of certain things even as we know that "subjectivity," "bias" etc is always operating.
At the level of the social, I always wonder about the mechanisms at work that shape those phenomena that appear to be "just natural," that seem to be "just the way things are" (mechanisms such as propaganda, rhetoric, etc). When phenomena become normalized, it gets harder to apply stringent critique to them because we don't SEE that which appears to be normal and natural.
Of course, at the level of the individual, the "social" also shapes us, shapes our thoughts. It's not two separate levels--the individual and the social, but two aspects in interplay. Some would call it "dialectics."
Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to write out these thoughts. I'm looking forward to getting to the next readings that are soooooo related!!!
Thank you for sharing Professor Rose. The proceedings of this Mississippi court definitely do not conform to the due process model. While I can appreciate the judge’s rationale to use strained public resources more economically, what is going on is an undeniable violation of the accused’s 6th Amendment rights. While I did not naively believe that the criminal justice system would at every stage staunchly uphold the rights of those who find themselves in the system, I did not expect that such abuses as detailed in this article still exist! What does it say about us (or the system in general) that we allow such things to happen? That we turn our backs on how the poor get treated and somehow, just because they’re accused of a crime they’re guilty? What happened to innocent until proven otherwise?
For the criminal justice system to be perceived as legitimate by those they serve, justice must be swift and certain. I am not surprised that many have lost their faith in the system and even resent it. I think there needs to be a more fundamental change in how courts operate and process clients.
Something we all should agree is that the story is fascinating and that it makes us question the validity of each one of the characters’ story. As Monica mentioned, how does our own point of view affects our interpretation of the story? How difficult was it to put our perspectives last? This story took place in the Japanese Feudal society where samurais were an important piece of the society. They were considered strong, skilled and honorable people, whatever that meant at that time. In my mind, I couldn’t think of a scenario in which this samurai can be killed by a person without the same skills. It is hard to get the right facts when we have so many different stories.
Marina, thank you for sharing the article “New Jersey Justice: Prison for Telling the Truth”. It is a shame that this family is going through this difficult moment. Why do we have states such as Texas and Alabama that honor permits from almost every state, but other states such as New Jersey and New York that have a limit? Although I understand each state has its own sovereignty on gun permit regulations, I believe these laws could be more flexible depending on the circumstances.
"everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts" a brilliant quotation to post given the themes of this conversation. I'm sad to have just found time to interact with this blog conversation now, perhaps once everyone else has forgotten about it. Truth and perspective are such tricky things for me. I know about the terrible frequency of false or inaccurate eyewitness statements due to the fallibility of the human mind or it's susceptibility to suggestion ( by self-interested cops), indeed it is my realization of the all too common misdeed in the criminal justice system that led me into my appreciation of the Innocence Project ( a non-profit based in NYC that works to unravel the pluthera of wrongful convictions across the US.)
But the conversation of perspective is far too appealing to ignore in this post. Our world vision infects EVERYTHING we are (in my humble opinion). We say certain things, do certain things, feel certain ways, because of the way we see the world. Our perspective infiltrates every part of our being (I'm using absolutes and I'm unashamed).
I was struck, however, despite considering myself to have a feminist worldview, at the idea that I could be penning the woman as the criminal because of my western world view where we are often led to see the woman as culpable for all mishaps (and from what little I know about eastern culture this is true there as well). It was like mid-sentence in class I realized that I could have been seeing the female as guilty because I was "normalized" as professor Waterston to believe that the woman is ultimately guilty. How easy it is then, to see from the perspective of the everyday folk who just buy into the norms they subconsciously digest because they have never been given the push they need to think outside of the flow.
I often joke that most humans are robots controlled by mass media (and massive corporations and government because they are all related), but I mostly mean it. To answer the question posed by Gina, I think people buy into common notions of "guilt" and "innocence" and the idea that innocent people can be held behind bars without conviction because it's easier to believe our system operates the way it claims to as opposed to researching outside of mass media and finding the truth. These folks are "normalized" they are "programmed" like a robot would be. It doesn't directly effect hem so why would they care? This, in my opinion is the greatest faults of american society.
Coming back to the question of shaping the "truth" of this story by understanding of the slipperiness of language, I would say that language is the only part of culture. Sometimes, it is too hard to understand why people do particular things unless you not only understand but "breathe" the language. There is the whole science which is called forensic linguistics, which is oriented to studies words as evidence of crime. I do have luck to have BA degree in linguistics. However, I believe to figure out the truth in this story we need the person with the deepest understanding of Japanese culture.
However, it is new and growing discipline, which starts developing in 1970's.
Please check this link if you are interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foqk1uJz31I
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