This election season has been mired with accusations of corruption. As always I firmly believe that accusations against a person, when not qualified clearly as opinion, should be accompanied by supporting evidence. No, we may not be making a case in a court of law but even in regular discourse there can be an expectation for the philosophical burden of proof.
Let’s begin by breaking down the components needed to prove corruption.
The International Anti-Corruption Resource Center put together an excellent guide, themselves, in which they define corruption as “Offering, giving, receiving or soliciting, directly or indirectly, of anything of value to influence improperly the actions of another party,” and they break it down into the following components:
- Offering, giving, receiving or soliciting
- Directly or indirectly
- Anything of value
- To influence improperly
- The actions of another party
While I encourage all of you to read the entire guide, I’ll be focusing on “to influence improperly” for the purposes of this piece. This is the requirement that’s scarcely satisfied by the accusations regularly witnessed; accusations that are stated as fact and as absolute proof of corruption.
First, let’s break the scenario apart. Event A will be the act of receiving a thing of value. Event B will be the act of performing a duty in a way influenced by the reception of that thing of value. Event C is an alternative to Event B and an act of performing a duty in a way not influenced by the reception of the thing of value.
The problem often witnessed in online discourse is that a person has an incredible amount of evidence of Event A, but they use it as though it is evidence of Event B. Worse, the more evidence of Event A they have, the more they feel, with absolute certainty, that Event B must have occurred. This is where reason is abandoned in favor of emotion and the pretense of having evidence falls to the reality that they’ve been operating off of assumptions. When pressed that their evidence doesn’t support Event B they’ll typically become frustrated, attempt to overwhelm with more evidence of Event A, or simply insult the one who points out the folly in their logic. Naturally none of those reactions remedy the situation, and further discourse falls into the abyss or irrelevancy.
To truly prove corruption, evidence of Event B having taken place is what needs to be presented. The problem is the difficulty in obtaining such evidence. No doubt it’s this difficulty that leads many—consciously or otherwise—to try relying on evidence of Event A and making the emotional appeal that Event B must have followed.
Evidence of corruption can come in two varieties: direct and circumstantial.
Direct evidence is clearly ideal. This would be discovered memos, e-mails, recorded conversations, etc., specifically citing the occurrence of Event B; that an act was committed specifically because the person received something of value. Evidence like this is a jackpot. It’s hard to come by but it isn’t impossible. Taped phone calls, for instance, proved the fraud committed by Irish bankers who nearly bankrupted their country, and they were subsequently imprisoned.
Circumstantial evidence is more commonly relied on in cases of corruption, however it can be difficult to wield. This is because circumstantial evidence of an act should only be considered in courts when it is not consistent with them being innocent. I can’t explain it any better than how California explains it to juries:
“If you can draw two or more reasonable conclusions from the circumstantial evidence, and one of those reasonable conclusions points to innocence and another to guilt, you must accept the one that points to innocence.”
So if Event C remains a possibility after considering the circumstantial evidence, and the accused may have been innocent of the charge, you must assume their innocence. They are, after all, innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The possibility of a path to innocence provides the reasonable doubt of guilt.
The moral of the story is that if you want to accuse a person of being corrupt you’d better come armed with strong evidence of the actual corrupt act, because the burden of proof is perhaps more incredible against corruption than against any other form of crime.