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Conviction by Contradiction
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The classic whodunit challenges the viewer to solve the crime along with the detective. Since the viewer isn't a professional, the crime has to be set up so that the solution doesn't rely on skills only a licensed criminologist would have. These mysteries often work by reducing the crime to a logic puzzle: you solve the mystery by finding the fact that doesn't fit. The problem with this is the "solution" at the back of the book doesn't give the perp a chance to offer a perfectly reasonable explanation. So, for example, let's say the police are investigating a murder, and Bob is their lead suspect. Bob says that at the time of the murder he was attending a party and his friend Alice was there with him. But wait! It turns out that Alice was on vacation in a foreign country at the time, so she couldn't have attended the party with Bob. In fiction, this is usually enough to prove Bob's guilt, or at least cast serious suspicion on Bob. In the real world, of course, this does not in any way mean that Bob committed murder. Maybe Bob still attended the party, but it was with his friend Charlie, not Alice. Maybe the party was on a different night, or there was a second party that Alice did attend with Bob, and Bob just misremembered. Maybe he attended the party with a different person named Alice, and for whatever reason answered the question only mentioning the first name. Maybe Bob was lying because he was doing something embarrassing that still wasn't, you know, murder. Real crimes aren't logic puzzles and mere factual inconsistencies aren't a substitute for hard evidence. Poking holes in a suspect's story might push a jury towards the edge, but it's not going to convince them by itself. You might be able to Pull the Thread, but on its own, proving that the suspect lied about something doesn't prove he committed the crime (especially if he has a Big Secret). At best, this kind of logic game can be used during Perp Sweating to get a confession. At worst, Detective Brown will arrest the perp immediately, but Perry Mason wouldn't even break a sweat getting an acquittal from that. More realistic examples focus on the investigative side, where the contradiction satisfies the significantly lower standard of proof required to arrest someone and investigate them further, rather than the much higher standard to convict them, or on non-legal contexts where the solution is just about swaying people's opinions rather than meeting any rigorous standard of proof. Some stories handwave this issue by having the contradiction lead to further investigation and the discovery of more concrete evidence. In stories involving teenage perpetrators, the crimes are often rather minor and the solution has them immediately confess when the contradiction is pointed out; this is somewhat less plausible against adult suspects, but even in Real Life, plenty of people don't know their rights or make mistakes when pressed. Note that in modern legal systems, it is far more realistic to have this trope derail a prosecution, both because the defense only needs to introduce the possibility of reasonable doubt (which a contradiction in a witness statement often accomplishes), and because the prosecution has the burden of having to prove their case. A contradiction in the defense's alibi doesn't necessarily prove them guilty if the prosecution otherwise failed to make its case; but for the prosecution, even an entirely innocent mistake in a key witness statement can call the credibility of the entire statement into question and cause the case to collapse. However, an acquittal in such a case is not a slam dunk. The jury has the power to weigh conflicting evidence and may still find the defendant guilty. Such convictions have been affirmed on appeal. See also Conviction by Counterfactual Clue, which is when the "flaw" found to prove the suspect's guilt is simply erroneous. This overlaps with Hyper-Awareness — sometimes it's just hyper-awareness taken too far, to the point of noticing details that logically shouldn't even be noteworthy. Can lead to a minor Inferred Holocaust, if logic dictates that the supposedly happy ending will lead to either a guilty character escaping or an innocent one being convicted. These types of inferences often run afoul of Hanlon's Razor, blaming every flaw or contradiction on lies and conspiracy rather than, say, faulty memory or panic. Compare I Never Said It Was Poison, where the suspect demonstrates knowledge of a detail or two they shouldn't. This gets particularly egregious when the story contains perfectly good alternative clues, but the flimsy one was chosen as The Clue. |
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| Conviction by Contradiction | isPartOf |
DBTropes | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_118a2d16 | type |
Hanlon's Razor | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_118a2d16 | comment |
Sometimes, Haledjian completely disregards sheer stupidity as an answer. In one mystery, he was on his way to a BBQ when the host was found murdered. His neighbor came over, saying he heard his wife scream in horror, and during the interrogation, spotted the wife's pearl earring in the grill and reached his hand in to retrieve it. The detective told him that he obviously planted the earring because, despite having just arrived, he knew that the coals were cool enough to plunge his hand into them. Apart from the fact that coal visibly whitens when heated and that people can sense heat when standing next to hot coals, does he ever consider the fact that the guy could have just been an idiot? | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_14db7384 | type |
Express Lane Limit | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_14db7384 | comment |
Book 15, Chapter 1 ("The Case of the Supermarket Shopper"): The perp buys time to rob his victim's house by asking the victim to add four tubes of toothpaste to his supermarket order of seven items. This required the victim to check out in a regular shopping lane instead of the 10-items-or-less express lane, which otherwise would have allowed him to return in time to see his house being robbed. Brown figures it out because the perp was the last of the victim's friends to ask for items, and his order was too plainly designed to surpass the Express Lane Limit. Of course, the fact that the perp counted on both the victim and grocery staff to obey the letter of the express lane rules and for the express lane line to be open and available at the same time he was at the store pretty much means he deserved to get caught. Even Donald Sobol (the author) seemed to realize that this one was flimsy; Mrs. Brown specifically mentions that the store is notorious for demanding exactly ten items for the express lane. That doesn't quite fix the problems (again, the lane might not have been open in the first place), but points for trying. | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_14ed6ab7 | type |
Does This Remind You of Anything? | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_14ed6ab7 | comment |
Book 14, Chapter 10 ("The Case of the Thermos Bottle"): Bugs Meany holds a raffle drawing at a fair for a baseball glove and has one of his friends reach around for another associate's balls in the big container of ping-pong balls. Encyclopedia discovers he was cheating by noticing that Bugs drank a canned soda when he was carrying around a thermos, thus meaning he put the ball in the freezer, then took it to the fairgrounds in the thermos so the associate would just have to feel around for a frozen ball. It's entirely possible that Bugs simply didn't want whatever was in his thermos at that particular moment or was saving it for later. Or that he'd already emptied his thermos, and found himself wanting another drink. | |
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Conviction by Contradiction / int_14ed6ab7 | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_1aa08f77 | type |
Multiple Endings | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_1aa08f77 | comment |
In two of the three endings to Clue, Wadsworth deduces that the cook used to work for Mrs. Peacock and that Mrs. Peacock had killed her because Mrs. Peacock said that what the cook had made for dinner was one of her favorite recipes -– "and monkey's brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington, D.C." | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_20d965e | type |
Gentleman Thief | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_20d965e | comment |
A popular (well, often seen) riddle for kids goes like this: The detective is in a hotel room because the hotel's director told him that a famous thief is in the hotel. Then, someone knocks at the door of the detective's room. He opens, and there's a guy, who apologizes: "Sorry, I thought this was my room." The detective arrests him immediately, and guess what, it's really the Gentleman Thief he was looking for. Oh, the reason? Because nobody will knock on the door of his own room—so the thief must've been checking whether the room was empty and he could plunder it! (Because it couldn't be, let's say, that his wife was in the room, had been taking a shower and he wanted to warn her, in case she wasn't dressed yet, and other people were in the corridor, or that he left the keys in the room while his wife stayed so he had to knock on the doors. Guess the thief is at least guilty of not inventing a good excuse.) | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_2a090d00 | type |
Lampshade Hanging | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_2a090d00 | comment |
Lampshaded this in one of his stories, in which a character points out that in most detective stories all the detective's deductions could easily be picked apart by a competent defense lawyer and it's a good thing the detective is always able to use their deductions to make the perpetrator panic and incriminate themselves before they go to trial. That didn't stop him from flirting with the trope himself, though. | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_40bb59d0 | type |
Blatant Lies | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_40bb59d0 | comment |
One of the Al-Qaeda bombers who attacked the US Embassy in Nairobi was rumbled this way. He was supposed to have committed suicide after his task (to throw a sound grenade into the courtyard to draw people to the windows before the bomb hit) was complete, but suddenly found a very good reason not to, and fled to a hotel in the suburbs. When the Agency interviewed him, he told them that he was wearing the same clothes he had worn on the day of the explosion. But they were pristine, whilst the CIA agents' clothes were worn after only a few days in the country. Then, he claimed he washed them. Not impossible. However, his belt, which he claimed to have been wearing on the day of the blast, was pristine, as opposed to the worn straps Kenya had made of the CIA's. And you don't wash a belt, so it must have been put on later, so the man must have been lying. When this error was pointed out to him, he spilled all. | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_47f95750 | type |
Separated at Birth | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_47f95750 | comment |
More like "Identification by Contradiction," but one episode ended with the team needing to figure out which of a pair of identical twins had killed the other. The surviving twin's claim to be Jesse is "proven" false when the boys' father, who hasn't seen them since they were toddlers and has mental problems, recognizes a nervous tic of Wallace's. This identification is enough for Wallace to drop the act and beg his mother for help. Not that the impersonation could have lasted for long, mind you, since the men both had fingerprints on file and had been Separated at Birth and lived very different lives, not to mention Wallace being the only one to inherit a degree of their father's condition... which only makes it stranger that this is what the team considers incontrovertible proof (Hotch even claims that the fingerprints can be faked, but apparently slightly twitching one's finger can't). | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_4a5e894e | type |
Suspiciously Specific Tense | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_4a5e894e | comment |
Brass once grew suspicious of a grieving husband saying "I loved my wife" as she was carried out by EMTs after a supposed bathing accident, but at the time since it was just a passing hunch, he doesn't seriously investigate the matter until it comes up again later. He still has to get the lab to find more definitive proof of foul play before he could do anything substantial and the criminal wasn't arrested by the end of the episode (though the raised suspicions were enough for the wife's life insurance company to repossess the husband's newly-bought Ferrari). | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_4aaffbd5 | type |
I Never Said It Was Poison | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_4aaffbd5 | comment |
Book 18, Chapter 9 ("The Case of the Disgusting Sneakers"): One story had a girl having one of her sneakers stolen from her before a sneaker contest was held. The thief was identified because she said to another person that the girl had the sneaker stolen from her "while clipping her toenails", even though all the girl said was that she was "clipping her nails". And only the thief would know that she had been clipping her toenails and not her fingernails (even though if someone said she had her sneaker stolen while clipping her nails before a contest involving feet, most would immediately assume the nails WERE toenails, not fingernails.) There's no reason to take your shoes off to clip your fingernails, and it's a safe bet a person would notice someone stealing shoes that they were wearing at the time, making it even less of a stretch to assume that toenails were meant. | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_4b17763f | type |
Technology Marches On | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_4b17763f | comment |
Zig-zagged with one case: A woman is assaulted at the beach. There are three suspects: a snorkeler, a skin diver, and a dog-walker. Two of them attacked the woman, the last one called the police on the payphone (It was the 1970s). The "answer" is that the dog-walker was the one who called the police — since he is more likely to have pocket change, as the others are in swimsuits. While that makes sense, apparently the caller did not think to describe what the aggressors look like, there were presumably only four people at the beach that day, and the perps didn't flee the scene of the crime. But, it's still possible (just not very likely) that either of the swimmers may have had some pocket change, such as keeping it in their shoes on the beach, and they never mentioned this. | |
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Conviction by Contradiction / int_4b17763f | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_5c04772f | type |
Conviction by Counterfactual Clue | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_5c04772f | comment |
Overlapping with Conviction by Counterfactual Clue, a person who apparently committed suicide should have had the possibility of foul play. The reason was that he recently had a heart attack, yet had salt on the table (which he should have been avoiding) and this "proved" somebody else was in the house. Because apparently, a suicidal person would adhere to health warnings, and not just that they couldn't have had a salt shaker on the table but simply not used it personally and/or kept it there for guests. This does very little to prove that someone was actually in the house. | |
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Conviction by Contradiction / int_5c04772f | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_5ea9e6f3 | type |
Edutainment Game | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_5ea9e6f3 | comment |
The DOS Edutainment Game, Eagle Eye Mysteries falls victim to this at least once. Although the guilty party usually tells a very blatant lie that makes everything they say untrustworthy, you usually find other physical evidence too. Not so in one case, where a suspected Moon rock theft hinges almost entirely on the thief calling said object a sedimentary rock, despite the player researching in-game that it is physically impossible for a Moon rock to be sedimentary. No other evidence is found to implicate the suspect. (Because if you don't know your basic geology terms, you are clearly a thief.) | |
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| Conviction by Contradiction / int_6b35bdff | type |
Serious Business | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_6b35bdff | comment |
Book 13, Chapter 2 ("The Case of the Hidden Penny"): A stolen rare coin is found inside Bugs Meany's hot dog. How did Encyclopedia know where to find it? Because he saw Bugs spread mustard on top of the sauerkraut, and "no one who likes hot dogs does that." Admittedly, it is a pretty messy way to go about things (similar to trying to spread peanut butter on top of jelly), but c'mon. Interestingly, the story effectively admits Bugs would have walked if he'd been willing to finish his hot dog, and presumably swallow the coin in the process. Also a case of Technology Marches On, as a modern reader would expect the mustard to come out of a squeeze bottle and be easier to have on top than the sauerkraut. Plus, who's to say Bugs hadn't just overlooked the mustard jar, or that someone else was hogging it when he first started applying his hot dog toppings? For that matter, how hard would it have been for him to just put the bite of hot dog in his mouth and stick the penny under his tongue or the bottom of his cheek? | |
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Conviction by Contradiction / int_6b35bdff | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_7c0bfb83 | type |
Obviously Evil | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_7c0bfb83 | comment |
Occasionally played with in the show, such as in "Doubt". The guy they arrest is obviously the killer, but he doesn't confess and they have no real evidence against him besides the profile, so they're forced to let him go (the fact that a Copycat Killer attacks while he's in custody helped). | |
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Miranda Rights | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_7f6a54f2 | comment |
One riddle involves having to figure out why a suspect was let go. It turns out he was deaf and thus couldn't understand his Miranda rights when read to him. Aside from the fact that many deaf individuals know how to lip read,note Lip reading is only good for at most 30% of the information the speaker is trying to convey, but it would be enough with the context for the deaf person to understand what was going on and request an interpreter. the whole idea hinges on Hollywood law, as no mention of him confessing is made. Obviously if he confessed the police would quickly have learned of his deafness and made sure his rights were understood, giving them in writing or through a sign language translator if necessary. A deaf person will most likely tell the police immediately they're deaf to facilitate this, if they didn't notice already. | |
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Trope Namers | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_8ac2fe0d | comment |
A series of short plays for kids published in the UK featured a detective with the catchphrase "And I can prove it because you made four silly mistakes". The mistakes rarely proved anything. (In fact, one of them was the fallacy namer for No True Scotsman; a character during the Jacobite Rebellion is exposed as an English spy because, amongst other things, he puts sugar on his porridge...) | |
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Conviction by Contradiction / int_8ac2fe0d | |
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Wild Teen Party | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_8af45dbd | comment |
Yet another story had Archie and Jughead housesitting for Mr. Lodge and Veronica while they went on a family trip. A crooked art dealer and one of Mr. Lodge's security guards use the opportunity to steal Mr. Lodge's collection of priceless paintings and replace them with forgeries while trashing the Lodge house to make it look like Archie and Jughead threw a Wild Teen Party and distract Mr. Lodge. When he comes home, Mr. Lodge falls for it and is furious with Archie and Jughead, but then Archie realizes that the paintings weren't at all damaged by the "party". He convinces Mr. Lodge that they were hung after the wrecking was done, and proves that they're fakes. Archie and Jughead then direct the police to the art gallery, where they find Mr. Lodge's real paintings. Archie explains that the crooked art dealer couldn't bear to damage his expert forgeries and ended up tipping Archie off to the fact that they were fakes, which makes this a case of Hoist by His Own Petard. | |
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Da Chief | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_a4be7043 | comment |
Another ep had Shelby try to identify a suspect in a smuggling case by the sound of his whistling a particular tune. She told Da Chief it had to be the musician who performed a concert in town whose song the suspect was whistling; Da Chief points out that a lot of people attended that concert and would have found the song catchy. A guy whistling that same tune walks past them and Da Chief smugly points and goes "See?" | |
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Conviction by Contradiction / int_a4be7043 | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_c36cba70 | type |
Mooks | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_c36cba70 | comment |
Book 3, Chapter 3 ("The Case of Bugs's Kidnapping"): At least one time the series used this trope absolutely correctly. Bugs claims to have been kidnapped at Encyclopedia's behest (how a 5th-grader was able to hire and control adult Mooks is never discussed). He describes being imprisoned in a small room and attempts to escape by removing the pins from the door hinges, but they are on the other side of the door. Then he tries to wait to the side of the door and jump his kidnappers when they come in, but the door opens into his face, foiling the attack. Standard house doors cannot open away from their hinges, only toward them. | |
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Insane Troll Logic | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_c5f0119c | comment |
Cole asks the husband of a murder victim what size shoes he wears. The husband responds by saying, "size nines, I think". The player needs to press "lie", to prompt Cole to accuse the husband of purposefully lying to him, then present the work shoes Cole found in his bedroom, which are size eights. While not on the level of Insane Troll Logic it's still a ridiculous assumption to make for a whole multitude of reasons, particularly since it's only a single shoe size in difference (and the husband even said "I think", admitting upfront that he wasn't entirely certain). | |
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Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_d4ba9971 | comment |
In "Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees", sports agent Rob Sherman has made it look like he shot and killed a burglar who apparently broke into his house and killed his wife (the trick is that he shot the "burglar" with a semi-automatic and the wife with a revolver, then planted the revolver on the "burglar", making great use of a Deceased Fall-Guy Gambit). Monk suspects Sherman is lying because he gave the alleged invader one single shot, instead of unloading his gun on him in a fit of rage and fear like someone would do in a situation like that. Further evidence is that the "burglar" owned a .22 caliber (which he left at home), the revolver found on the body was a .38 caliber, and there is no .38 caliber ammunition in his apartment. Nevermind it's a good deal safer to steal a gun for a crime or buy it on the black market than use one you're known to legally own, and toss the stolen one afterwards. | |
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Hand Wave | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_dbc2a0cd | comment |
Book 14, Chapter 7 ("The Case of the Marvelous Egg"): A local con man claims to have bred chickens that can lay square eggs. He comes up with a lame handwave as to why he simply can't show them, and claims instead that he'll stage a publicity stunt by having the skydiver standing with him jump holding one in a box only to have it still intact afterwards but needs money for promotion. Encyclopedia calls him out because the skydiver is wearing only one parachute, and all jump with two in case one fails...because there's no chance that someone might wear something different to a publicity event than during actual skydiving. Granted the con man does describe his accomplice as dressed "ready to jump", but considering the whole absurdity of the situation (the convenient excuse as to why he can't just show the eggs, the fact that a square probably would be crushed if held by a skydiver anyway, why such a stunt would even be necessary to promote square eggs, and of course, what the hell besides novelty value is the benefit of square eggs anyway?) it seems kind of silly that Encyclopedia quibbles over such a minor technicality. The "Solution" page at the end of the book even admits that had Wiggins not embellished his con by bringing his friend along, Encyclopedia would have had nothing to use against him and he could've successfully screwed the kids out of their money. | |
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Double Subversion | |
| Conviction by Contradiction / int_e407c52e | comment |
Double Subversion in Beavis and Butt-Head, of all shows. When our heroes are accused of egging Tom Anderson's house, Butt-Head is inspired by a court reporter he saw on TV to try and discredit Anderson's testimony by pointing out that Anderson couldn't clearly identify who threw the rotten eggs at his house. The judge is about to dismiss the case when the prosecutor objects, stating that neither Anderson nor any of the police reports or court documents had ever said the eggs were rotten. He then asks how Butt-Head could have known the eggs were rotten unless he and Beavis were the ones that threw them. Butt-Head has no response, and he and Beavis are sentenced to 500 hours of community service. | |
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Conviction by Contradiction |
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