Logical Reasoning

PT7 · S1 · Q23 Defendants who can afford expensive

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Defendants who can afford expensive private defense lawyers have a lower conviction rate than those who rely on court-appointed public defenders.

Conclusion (this explains why)

Criminals committing lucrative crimes (embezzlement, insider trading) are more successful at avoiding conviction than street criminals.

Premise

Defendants with expensive private lawyers have a lower conviction rate than those with court-appointed public defenders.

Evaluate

The evidence is Comparative (lower conviction rate), and the conclusion is Causal (this explains why).

That means we're dealing with the #1 argument pattern of Str / Wkn: Explain Curious Fact.

CURIOUS FACT Why do defendants with private defense lawyers have a lower conviction rate than those with public defenders?

i.e. why is having a private defense lawyer correlated with lower conviction rates and having a public defender correlated with higher conviction rates?

AUTHOR'S CAUSAL INTERPRETATION The more expensive lawyer is causing the lower conviction rate.

The author is also clearly assuming that defendants charged with embezzlement / insider trading are more likely to have a private defense lawyer, whereas street criminals are more likely to have a public defender.

Goal

When it comes to the Explain Curious Fact part of the argument, we can strengthen by ruling out an alternate explanation for the lower conviction rate of private defense lawyers (maybe they're not actually better lawyers, but their clients are just less often guilty and so it's easier to get an acquittal).

We could boost the plausibility of the author's causal story with any fact that makes it seem like private defense lawyers are more skilled at getting convictions than public defenders are.

Or we could strengthen by supporting the author's assumption that ppl charged with embezzlement / insider trading are more likely to have private defense, while street criminals are more likely to have public defenders.

23.

The explanation offered above would be more persuasive if which one of the following were true?

  1. Many street crimes, such as

    Opposite

    This goes against the author's implicit mapping of "embezzlement / insider trading = private lawyers" and "street crimes = public defenders." This answer suggests that street criminals could be hiring expensive private lawyers.

    4% picked this

  2. Most prosecutors are not competent

    No Impact

    This weakens by supplying an alternate explanation for the disparity in conviction rates. Embezzlers and insider traders don't have a lower conviction rate because their fancy private defense lawyer is so skilled; instead, it's because the prosecutor is so bad at dealing with the technical financial evidence involved in those crimes.

    13% picked this

  3. The number of criminals convicted

    No Impact

    The total number of street-crime convictions versus financial-crime convictions doesn't matter because the conclusion sounds like it's about rates. When we say certain criminals are "more successful" at avoiding conviction is sound like "they are less likely to be convicted", not just a raw number. If 80% of Laura's students get 170+ scores whereas only 40% of Dave's students get 170+ scores, then we'd say that Laura is the more successful tutor, even if Dave numerically has more students in the 170's.

    20% picked this

  4. Correct

    The percentage of defendants who

    Why this is right

    This strengthens by ruling out an alternative explanation for why the conviction rate is lower for defendants with private lawyers. It's not because they are less likely to have actually committed a crime. When Strengthen answers are ruling out an alternate explanation, they usually sound like they are "controlling for some variable", and so you'll commonly see language like, "People in this group were no more likely to be [this alt. explanation] than people in the other group".

    Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    58% picked this

  5. Juries, out of sympathy for

    Opposite

    This weakens by suggesting an alternate explanation. Street criminals aren't getting convicted at higher rates because of their relatively poorer public defenders. They're getting convicted more because juries are much more likely to convict for certain types of crimes (such as violent street crimes) than they are for other crimes that deal only with property (such as embezzlement and insider trading).

    5% picked this

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