I had a weird dream the other night. (It was random and dream-like, like dreams often are, but for the purposes of this post I’ll pretend like it was more understandable than it really was; the gist of it is the same.) I was the judge of a no-jury court case. It involved a man who had stolen priceless paintings. All of his illegal activities of breaking and entering and stealing these paintings from a museum were all recorded by security cameras. His face could be seen very easily.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately he had an identical twin brother. They were both sitting there in the court room before me, both claiming innocence, both with the same solid alibi of walking around a bookstore that night, which was also caught on camera. They both knew exactly what one of them was doing at the bookstore. I questioned them separately (I’m not sure if that’s really something a judge would do, but I did), and they both told the same story, which supported what was on camera.<\/p>\n
There was no DNA evidence left behind by either man.<\/p>\n
Lastly, I did not have the lie detecting skills of that guy in Lie to Me<\/em>, so I couldn’t do anything very dramatic involving catching one of them in a lie or giving them the Prisoner’s Dilemma<\/a>.<\/p>\n And in the dream I thought it was a riddle, as if there definitely was<\/em> a way to solve the conundrum and I just had to figure it out.<\/p>\n But I woke up with the riddle unsolved.<\/p>\n Is there an answer? Or is that the perfect way to get out of a crime?<\/p>\n