Building Bayesian Networks for Legal Evidence with Narratives: a Case Study Evaluation

Charlotte S. Vlek, Henry Prakken, Silja Renooij, Bart Verheij

In a criminal trial, evidence is used to draw conclusions about what happened concerning a supposed crime. Traditionally, the three main approaches to modeling reasoning with evidence are argumentative, narrative and probabilistic approaches. Integrating these three approaches could arguably enhance the communication between an expert and a judge or jury. In previous work, techniques were proposed to represent narratives in a Bayesian network and to use narratives as a basis for systematizing the construction of a Bayesian network for a legal case. In this paper, these techniques are combined to form a design method for constructing a Bayesian network based on narratives. This design method is evaluated by means of an extensive case study concerning the notorious Dutch case of the Anjum murders.

Manuscript (in PDF-format)

Reference:
Vlek, C., Prakken, H., Renooij, S., & Verheij, B. (2014). Building Bayesian Networks for Legal Evidence with Narratives: a Case Study Evaluation. Artificial Intelligence and Law 22 (4), 375-421. doi:10.1007/s10506-014-9161-7.

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