{"id":6859,"date":"2020-01-26T06:51:21","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T10:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=6859"},"modified":"2022-03-24T15:52:09","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T19:52:09","slug":"patrick-dale-walker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/patrick-dale-walker\/","title":{"rendered":"Patrick Dale Walker\u2014Why a Judge Let Him Go + the Tragic Result"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who was Patrick Dale Walker? Why was he let out on bail? How could such atrocities be prevented in the future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patrick Dale Walker was a Texan who was arrested for attempting to murder his girlfriend. Even though the crime was serious, the judge set his bail at $25,000 and let him go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find out what happened in the Patrick Dale Walker case and why it’s so easy for a judge to make a devastating mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Patrick Dale Walker: The Problem with Judging a Book by Its Cover<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The bail hearings described in the section Judges vs. Artificial Intelligence<\/em> are another exercise in transparency. Judges who look at their defendants make more mistakes in judging character than a computer that never sees the defendants at all. Watching someone\u2019s facial expressions is not a fail-proof way to see how that person is feeling.<\/strong> Someone who is surprised might not show it, and someone who is dangerous might come across as stereotypically demure.
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A man named Patrick Dale Walker was arrested in Texas for trying to kill his girlfriend. The only reason he didn\u2019t succeed in murdering her was that the gun jammed when he pulled the trigger. The judge presiding over the case set bail at $1 million, and Patrick Dale Walker went to prison. But four days later, the judge lowered the bail to $25,000 and Walker was released. 
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The judge reasoned that four days in jail would be enough for Patrick Dale Walker to \u201ccool off.\u201d He saw Walker as a polite young man with a clean record. Most important, he saw <\/em>that Walker was remorseful for what he had done. But could he really see something like remorse in a stranger?<\/em> Apparently not. Patrick Dale Walker shot his girlfriend to death four months later. 
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In this case, seeing Patrick Dale Walker made the judge worse at interpreting his intentions. The information the judge thought he gleaned from observing Walker\u2019s seemingly <\/em>remorseful behavior was actually misinformation, because Walker was not transparent. <\/strong>
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Judges Vs. Artificial Intelligence <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Could the murder of Patrick Dale Walker’s girlfriend have been prevented by the use of a computer rather than a judge?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a typical Thursday in Brooklyn, Judge Solomon was presiding over his courtroom. His primary responsibility for the day was arraignments. He had to see every defendant who had been arrested in the last 24 hours, look at their criminal history, listen to the testimony of both the prosecution and the defense, and then decide if the defendant would be offered bail and the chance to be released from custody. In short, Judge Solomon had to look a perfect stranger in the eye, assess his character, and decide if he deserved his freedom. <\/strong>But does looking a person in the eye actually help you judge his nature?<\/em> This was the problem in the Patrick Dale Walker case.
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A team from the University of Chicago, led by Sendhil Mullainathan, set out to answer that question. The experiment went like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Mullainathan gathered the data of all 554,689 defendants that went through the NYC courts from 2008-2013. They found that 400,000 of those defendants had been released by the judges that presided over their arraignments. <\/li>
  2. Mullainathan built a computer with an artificial intelligence system. <\/li>
  3. The computer was fed the data of the same 554,689 cases. It then made its own list of the 400,000 defendants least likely to commit a crime while out on bail. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The Results <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n