#13 - Columnist: Tagowa’s testimony in the Pemberton trial

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (A)

In this stimulus, the columnist leaps from a discussion regarding Togawa’s testimony inside the courtroom (to which the columnist does not have access) to Togawa’s comments outside the courtroom. The columnist concludes, based on Togawa’s later statements about Pemberton’s guilt, that the jury must not have believed Togawa’s testimony.

What is the problem here? That we can only speculate regarding Togawa’s testimony inside the courtroom—the jury could have believed all of her testimony, if, for example, her general beliefs regarding Pemberton’s guilt never came out during the trial.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. As discussed above, the columnist fails to consider that Togawa’s testimony may not have included reference to her general beliefs regarding Pemberton’s guilt.

Answer choice (B): The stimulus contains no reference to what “ought” to be, so this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): There is no such presumption presented by the columnist.

Answer choice (D): There is no reference or allusion to dishonesty among witnesses, so this answer choice cannot be correct.

Answer choice (E): There is no reason for this consideration—jury members may disagree, but the argument presented in the stimulus draws conclusions based on the not-guilty verdict, not on any presumption of jury unanimity.

[lsatbossintraining]

Hi -

I don’t quite follow the explanation above. So let me walk you through my process up until my “uh oh” moment.

(C) Not all jury members believed T’s testimony because...
(E) The jury found P guilty and T’s publicly affirmed her belief in P’s guilt.

I don’t see the flaw because it seems natural that at least 1 jury member didn’t believe T, since they found P not guilty. If all jury members believed T (the conclusion’s negation) then they would’ve found him guilty. To that end, I didn’t see the issue but thought I’d treat the answer choices like abstract MBTs although nothing clicked once I ran through them.

What am I missing and what should be my takeaway from this particularly tricky question?

Many thanks,
Kyle

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Kyle,

The problem with the argument in the stimulus is that we don't know what Tagowa testified about. For example, maybe Tagowa is Pemberton's HR manager at work, and the defense attorneys called her to the stand as a character witness to testify that Pemberton is never absent from work and that nobody ever complains about Pemberton's job performance. And maybe the prosecution decided Tagowa wasn't that important a witness and didn't cross-examine her or ask her any questions. In that case, all the jury would've heard from Tagowa were good things about Pemberton's job performance, and nothing about whether Tagowa believed Pemberton was guilty. Thus, the jury could've believed all those good things, and then used them (in part) to decide Pemberton couldn't be guilty.

So, the fundamental flaw is the columist's drawing a conclusion about what the jury believed from Tagowa's testimony, without the colunist's having any evidence of what the jury actually heard from Tagowa's testimony.

The takeaway is to keep an eye out for missing information in the argument. The argument subtly pulls you in this direction in the first sentence when it states, "Tagowa’s testimony in the Pemberton trial was not heard outside the courtroom, so we cannot be sure what she said." So, the columnist up front admits we don't have all the information--that's an important detail to take notice of!

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[appletree]

Hello,
I am still having trouble understanding why answer B is wrong.
I thought it was right because I thought just because the jury found Pemberton not guilt does not mean they did not believe Tagowa's testimony. It could have been that even though they believed it, they still decided to rule not guilty.
Wouldn't that be confusing facts "about what certain people believe with facts about what ought to be the case" ?
Thank you in advance!

[Robert Carroll]

apple,

The stimulus does not rely on any judgment about what should be the case. The stimulus is describing things that happened - Tagowa's testimony, Tagowa's statements outside of court, and the jury's determination. In none of those reported facts does the author claim that something ought to be done, or ought not to be done. We at PowerScore call this the "fact vs. opinion" distinction - facts are neutral statements of what's true, whereas opinions are judgments about what should happen, or what's right or just, or things of that nature. Note that "facts about what ought to be the case" means "facts about opinions" - so that's opinion-based language, not fact-based language, because the "facts" are about what ought to happen - in other words, information about opinion judgments.

Robert Carroll

[annabelle.swift]

Why is E wrong?

I thought E was providing a reason why the premise (since the jury found Pemberton not guilty) could be right and the conclusion (not all of the jury members believed Tagowa's testimony) could be wrong, which would be a flaw in the argument.

I thought E pointed out that all the jury members could have believed Tagowa's testimony, but disagreed on how significant their testimony was and so found Pemberton not guilty. Wouldn't this also match up with the example below of Tagowa being Pemberton's character witness? The whole jury could believe Tagowa's testimony about Pemberton's job performance, but not put that much stock into the testimony (i.e. not consider it that significant) because it's not directly related to the alleged crime.

The problem with the argument in the stimulus is that we don't know what Tagowa testified about. For example, maybe Tagowa is Pemberton's HR manager at work, and the defense attorneys called her to the stand as a character witness to testify that Pemberton is never absent from work and that nobody ever complains about Pemberton's job performance. And maybe the prosecution decided Tagowa wasn't that important a witness and didn't cross-examine her or ask her any questions. In that case, all the jury would've heard from Tagowa were good things about Pemberton's job performance, and nothing about whether Tagowa believed Pemberton was guilty. Thus, the jury could've believed all those good things, and then used them (in part) to decide Pemberton couldn't be guilty.

[Adam Tyson]

Let's assume that answer E is a true statement, annabelle.swift. How would the columnist respond to being told "the jurors may not have all agreed about the significance of Tagowa's testimony; some thought it was important while others thought is was not."?

If I was that columnist, I would say "so what? It still has to be the case that at least some of them didn't believe her, because otherwise they would have found Pemberton guilty." This new information doesn't point out a problem with the argument, and the author could just shrug it off! To show that the author has made a mistake, to get them to say "oops, my bad, I screwed that up," we have to point out that her testimony may have done nothing to suggest his guilt. Answer E needs help, and it needs the kind of help that only answer A provides!

A good Flaw answer has to be both a true description of what happened in the stimulus, AND it has to point out a problem with the reasoning in that argument, such that the author would be forced to concede that their conclusion was not fully supported. In other words, it has to be relevant! If the author could accept that answer and still stand their ground and insist that they are correct, it's not a good flaw answer. The right answer presents a problem for the argument without any additional help or explanation.

[CJ12345:]

Hi, Powerscore,
My issue with E is that I think E could still weaken the conclusion.
The conclusion is that "not all of the jury members believed T's testimony" and the counter-conclusion would be: all the jury member believed T's testimony. I am asking myself how can I argue the counter-conclusion. I think AC E does give the reasoning. It said that they might all believe in T's testimony, but since they might assign different significance to his testimony, they might make a decision does or does not take T's testimony into account seriously. Why my reasoning is wrong?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

You are taking answer choice (E) too far, CJ.

Answer choice (E) is a good example of an answer choice that is true about the stimulus but not actually a flaw in the stimulus. So what if jury members can sometimes disagree about the significance of a witness's testimony? That doesn't indicate anything about whether jury members believe or not believe the witness.

Additionally, this isn't a weaken question, it's a flaw question. It needs to describe what is wrong, not make the argument worse. We want to make sure we are describing what the argument does, as well as describing a problem with the specific argument made. Weaken answer choices don't describe the argument.

Hope this helps