Abstract

Reason for Doubt

The author asks what the acquittal of real estate heir Robert Durst for the murder of his neighbor, Morris Black, whose body Durst admitted he dismembered, says about the United States legal system. I will pass fight over the question of whether Durst is or isn't the white O.J. and move straight to the question of truth. Our system of justice is heavily inflected by rules of evidence that came of age during a time when it was hoped that the scientific method could be applied to the social sciences, and that outcomes, whether decided by judges or juries, could be relied upon as accurate measures of penalty and consequence. But the death of Morris Black is a bit like one of those events that bedevil sciences of all sorts. You're pretty sure that an unknown virus is one part of a vector of causes in the outbreak of a mysterious medical syndrome, but no one can prove it. There's a certain pattern of clues, but no smoking gun. And that, I fear, does bring me back to the deep, hard version of those earlier questions: What tests of our notions of the neutrality of due process would be revealed if Durst had been poor, or black, or perceived as a white O.J., playing the system for everything it's worth?