Monday, August 28, 2006

Assignment 1 - Deception Example

Recently, John Mark Karr unexpectedly confessed to being the killer of JonBenet Ramsay, a young girl who was murdered ten years ago. The public was shocked to hear the news, the confession of the murderer, of this unresolved case. Today, however, the charges were dropped, and it was determined by the District Attorney that Karr was not actually the girl’s murderer – he had deceived everyone involved.

In the last few days, Karr repeatedly stated that he was guilty. He “told an international audience that he was present when Ramsay, a 6-year-old beauty pageant queen, was killed a decade ago.” He also “claimed to have killed Ramsey during sex.” We have now found out that he was actually being deceptive. His family stated that Karr was in fact with them during this time period, and the courts showed that his DNA did not match the DNA recovered at the crime scene.

Although it seems obvious at first, it isn’t immediately clear if Karr’s stories should be considered deception based on Vrij and Nyberg’s descriptions. Vrij describes deception as “a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt, without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the communicator considers to be untrue.” (pg. 6) Karr’s stories were definitely an unsuccessful attempt to create this false belief, but we can not know for certain what Karr himself believes to be the truth. Karr may have created a false memory or illusion about the past, and may have believe that what he was saying was in fact the truth – according to Vrij, this would not be deception (this could have been self-deception, which Vrij does not discuss, or some sort of false report). But if he was aware of the truth, then this would have been deception. We can not determine this without knowing what Karr himself actually believed to be truth.

Nyberg does not give a straightforward definition of deception, but we run into the same problem with his description of deception. His statements are what Nyberg calls straightforward lying, but he also requires an “intention to deceive” (pg. 75). We can’t be certain if Karr intended to deceive the public, or if he himself actually believed his falsehoods. Although we can’t determine if Karr was being deceptive, both authors would agree that Karr was certainly lying – saying that something is true when it is not true.

Link to LA Times article

1 Comments:

At 7:16 PM, Blogger Nicole said...

I have been following this story in the news because I always find it interesting when a crime is potentially solved years after all of the media hype. At first it seemed like investigator's had finally found their man. Karr looks like he could be some type of pedophile/killer when you see his picture, and his confession just sealed the deal. Then to find out that he was lying really caught me by surprise. Kate made some very good points about Karr maybe deceiving himself into beliving that he actually did kill Jon Benet. Since Karr's motives are unknown, it is hard to say if he was trying to deceive the public or not. Vrij would say this is not deception because Karr may believe that his story is true. It is also difficult to tell if this is deception after reading Nyberg because we do not know whether Karr is mentally ill or not. Overall I think Kate really hit some great points and it will be interesting to see the developments in the case in the future.

 

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