The Impending Execution of Johnnie Baston

Johnnie Baston is scheduled to be executed by the people of Ohio on 10 Mar 2011 for the murder of store owner Chong Hoon Mah. No one disputes Baston participated in the armed robbery of the store. Baston claims, however, that the actual shooting was done by a someone named Ray, who has to this day not been found.

I offer the following summary from U.S. District Court decision in Baston v. Bagley.

Chong Mah and his wife, Jin-Ju Mah, owned two retail stores in Toledo. Chong Mah managed the couple's downtown store, Continental Wigs N' Things. In addition to wigs, the store sold team logo hats and jackets. At approximately 11:30 a.m. on March 21, 1994, Jin-Ju Mah telephoned her husband and spoke to him at the downtown store. When Chong Mah failed to answer a later call, JinJu Mah became concerned. She then went to the downtown store, arriving around 5:10-5:15 p.m. She found the store unlocked and the lights on. The cash register was open and empty. In a rear storage room, Jin-Ju Mah found her husband's body—he had been shot once through the head. Chong Mah was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators found a single .45 caliber hollow-point slug behind the wall paneling in the room where Chong Mah was shot. An autopsy revealed that Chong Mah had been shot in the back of the head at a range of two to three inches. Examination of the crime scene caused investigators to believe that, in addition to the money in the cash register, Chong Mah's killer had also taken team logo hats and "Starter" type jackets from the store.

Also on March 21, 1994, David Smith went to downtown Toledo to meet with his parole officer. Baston accompanied him, but was not permitted to stay for the appointment. Records indicated that Smith met with his parole officer at approximately 11:30 a.m., and that the meeting lasted ten to fifteen minutes. When Smith left the meeting, he tried to find Baston. He "beeped" Baston on his pager, but there was no response. Smith then walked back and forth between the municipal building and the county jail four times, finally finding Baston in the vicinity of the municipal court. Baston and another friend, Bobby Mitchell, were in a yellow Cadillac owned by Smith's cousin, Michael Ridley. Mitchell first saw Baston on March 21, 1994 on River Street. Baston was carrying a dark brown plastic garbage bag that appeared to have something in it. Mitchell passed Baston as Mitchell went to his car, before proceeding to Smith's apartment, where he again saw Baston. Mitchell was there to see Ridley, who was also staying at the apartment.

While Mitchell was at Smith's apartment, he noticed some sports hats lined up on an end table, as well as a revolver. A short time later, Mitchell and Baston left the apartment in Ridley's Cadillac to pick up Smith downtown. When the two picked up Smith in front of the municipal court building, Mitchell was driving, Baston was in the passenger's seat, and Smith got in the back seat. Mitchell overheard Smith and Baston "mumbling" to each other, and heard Baston tell Smith "I did it." The trio then drove back to Smith's apartment.

After news coverage of Chong Mah's murder, an employee of a nearby club/ bar reported to police that at approximately 11:45 a.m. on the day of the murder, she saw a man carrying a plastic bag walk across a parking lot near the wig shop. The man caught her attention because he was heavily dressed despite it being unseasonably warm that day, and he was wearing a team logo jacket, and another jacket draped over his shoulders. She later said the man could have been Baston, but was unable to positively identify him. A patron of the bookstore adjacent to or near the wig shop told police that he thought he heard a gunshot shortly before noon on March 21, 1994.

A few days after the murder, Patricia Chininis contacted the Toledo Police. Patricia Chininis's daughter, Deana, was Smith's girlfriend. Both women also knew Baston. Patricia Chininis related that on the day before the shooting, Baston and Smith were at her house. In moving Baston's jacket, Patricia Chininis noticed it was unusually heavy. She felt the jacket, realized there was a gun in it, and told Baston and Smith never to come back to her house with a gun. Deana Chininis stated she previously saw both Smith and Baston with revolver-type guns and hollow-point bullets. Furthermore, the day or so after the murder Baston offered to give Deana's girlfriend a Starter jacket.

After receiving this information, police obtained a search warrant for Smith's apartment (where Baston was staying). Police seized four sport logo hats and several Starter jackets. A wig store employee identified these articles as being similar to those the store carried. The employee, an AfricanAmerican, also recalled that three weeks prior to the killing three AfricanAmerican males were in the store acting suspiciously. The employee overheard one of the three say to another: "No, it's a sister in here," before they left. The employee identified Baston as one of the three.

Smith, Deana Chininis, and two other persons were at the apartment when police executed the search warrant. While all four went to the police station, only Smith was cooperative. After interviewing Smith, the police obtained an arrest warrant for Baston.

Baston was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, at a church function. He was carrying a .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol and had a .45 caliber semi-automatic revolver in his luggage. The .45 caliber slug recovered at the crime scene matched those test-fired from the .45 caliber revolver seized from Baston. In an interview with Columbus police shortly after his arrest, Baston admitted participating in the robbery of the wig shop, but denied shooting Chong Mah. According to Baston, an accomplice named "Ray" took Chong Mah into the back room and shot him. Baston denied any intention to kill anyone, and claimed that Ray acted without Baston's prior knowledge.

Baston was indicted on two counts of aggravated murder and one count of aggravated robbery with a firearm specification. Each aggravated murder count carried a capital specification pursuant to R.C. 2929.04(A)(7). Baston pleaded not guilty and elected to be tried before a three-judge panel.

Baston contested that he was the principal offender in the aggravated murder. William Nappins, a defense witness, testified that while on his way to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at approximately 11:45 a.m. on the morning of the murder, he saw a tall, dark-skinned African-American male emerge from either the wig store or the book store next to it. The man was dressed in black and carrying a bag. Nappins's description of the man did not match that of Baston.

I now offer a more sympathetic perspective from Amnesty International.

Johnnie Baston, a 36-year-old African American man, is scheduled to be executed in Ohio on 10 March. He was sentenced to death in 1995 for a murder committed during a robbery in 1994.

Chong Hoon Mah, a South Korean immigrant to the USA, was shot and killed on 21 March 1994 during a robbery of one of the retail shops that he owned in Toledo, Ohio. Johnnie Baston was arrested after police received information that he was involved in the crime. He told police that he had participated in the robbery with an accomplice named “Ray”, a high-ranking gang member, who was the gunman. However, police were never able to identify or locate this person, and came to believe that Johnnie Baston acted alone. He was charged, pleaded not guilty, and chose to be tried before a three-judge panel rather than a jury. The judges sentenced him to death on 27 February 1995, finding only one mitigating factor – his young age – and ruling that this was outweighed by the nature of the crime.

Johnnie Baston has been on death row for 16 years, most of his adult life. At the time of the crime, he was just past his 20th birthday. He had been abandoned by his biological mother soon after he was born, and has never seen her since, his only communication with her being a letter from her after he was sent to death row. 

As a young boy, he was adopted by his aunt after she saw his bruising and malnourishment, evidence of a pattern of physical abuse and neglect in his first years at the hands of his father. At the clemency hearing before the Ohio Adult Parole Authority on 3 February 2011, his adoptive mother recalled that his parental abandonment had led to serious behavioural problems in his teenage years, culminating in her throwing him out of the home about a week before the crime.

Also at the clemency hearing was one of the prosecutors from the original trial. She said that Chong Mah’s son had asked her to appear to reiterate the victim’s family’s opposition to the execution of Johnnie Baston because of their respect for human life. Last year she and another prosecutor signed sworn statements that the Mah family had been opposed to the death penalty at the time of the trial as well. Last month, Chong Mah’s son also signed a statement that “my family and I are opposed to Mr Baston being executed”.

A senior Justice on the Ohio Supreme Court has called for abolition of the state’s death penalty, describing it as a “death lottery." By way of illustration, Johnnie Batson’s clemency petition points to the case of another defendant who was tried in the same county (Lucas County) for a comparable crime in 1994 (shooting of a store manager at close range during a robbery) and was sentenced to life imprisonment. The petition also pointed to the disproportionate number of death sentences passed against black defendants in Lucas County. Of the 21 death sentences passed there since 1981, in 16 cases the defendant was black, and in four cases white.

The parole board voted 9-0 against recommending clemency. Their recommendation is not binding on the Governor.

I oppose the execution of people who might be factually innocent of the crime for which they are to die. I suspect that to prevent the execution of the factually innocent, we might have to ban the death penalty entirely.

I find no evidence that Johnnie Baston did not participate in the armed robbery that led to the shooting death of Chong Hoon Mah. Since I limit my efforts to people who are in all respects factually innocent, I stand mute with regard to the execution of Johnnie Baston.

Skeptical Juror Rated #1 By Google

This morning, I saw an article about Google changing their ranking algorithm. "Websites to Google:" blared the headline. "You're killing our business!" It was as if someone plunged a dagger in my heart.

The major tweak aims to move better quality content to the top of Google's search rankings. The changes will affect 12% Google's results [sic], the company said in a blog post late Thursday.

I feared time and Google had caught up with me.

It all started on the night of February 17th. It was a dark and stormy night, as I recall. I began searching for an update on the case of Roy Willard Blankenship. He had been scheduled to be executed by the people of Georgia that evening. I was surprised that I could find no news about whether or not the execution had been carried out.

I checked again the next morning. Still no news then or later that day. The next day I saw bits of information that his execution had again been stayed, though no details were forthcoming. (His execution had been previously stayed based on the expiration date of the lethal chemicals Georgia planned to inject into him.) To this day, a hard-target search (of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse) on Google reveals no evidence of why Blankenship's execution was stayed on the 17th.

I find that curious.

While the impending execution of anyone in this country is serious business, I must return to the point of this post. While searching for information about Roy Willard Blankenship, I simply typed Roy Willard Blankenship into Google. I was admittedly astonished and giddy to see that my post The Impending Execution of Roy Willard Blankenship was #2 in the listings. It would later rise to #1 in the listings.

I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now. -- Navin R. Johnson

I've known for a long time that if one types Skeptical Juror into Google, the first ten pages or so are filled with hits to this august blog. That is to be expected since that two-word phrase is so rarely used elsewhere in polite society.

It was therefore with great trepidation that I typed Roy Willard Blankenship into the search field this morning. Glory Be!  Google's new search algorithm still lists my post as #1 out of 637,000 posts. I offer proof of that below.

In reality, there is no joy in Mudville. That top-ranked post contained little original content. I mostly cut and pasted from the 11th Circuit Court decision in Blankenship v. Hall. Furthermore, I simply announced that I would stand mute while we put another of our citizenry to death.

I know also that, had I been using another blog tool when I wrote my post, I would be buried somewhere deep, deep, deep in that list of 637,000 hits. I use Blogger though, and Google owns Blogger, and Google's search algorithm provides undue weight to Blogger posts. If one were to search for Roy Willard Blankenship in Bing, for example, the first hit would be the 11th Circuit Court decision itself. 

 

That's probably a more appropriate top find, given they wrote the decision and I merely cut and pasted from it. Out of curiousity, I began clicking through the Bing search pages to see where my post was listed. I gave up after 50 pages.

There's a lesson in here somewhere. It has something to do with humility and humble pie, and an ability to laugh at oneself.  It's also a reminder that I have yet to help free a single innocent person. Even in the cases of Byron Case and Michael Ledford, where I am directly involved, we're working on two-year plans that recognize long odds.

This is not work for the impatient or those who are faint of heart. There is no hope for immediate gratification. Still I choose to be optimistic about my work, our country, and our future. I like my work, I love my wife, and I am a lucky man. I'll leave it to Google and Bing to settle on the proper ranking of my blog posts.

Wrongful Convictions From Civil Behavior

In a previous post, I described "Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" as a convenient judicial myth. At the end of that post, I presented the following summary plot comparing the idealized concept against the reality of jury and judge verdicts.  I include that plot below for easy reference. Click to enlarge and clarify.

Judges and scholars, if forced to quantify the reasonable doubt threshold, tend place the threshold near 90%. In Proof Kinda Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, I reported that our jury pool self-reports a threshold of 85%. In Proof Beyond a Flip of the Coin, I report that more-subtle, less-biased surveys indicate that our jury pool places the threshold closer to 66%.

In this post, I regret to inform you that some studies place the actual threshold closer to 50%. The 50% limit is incompatible with a "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. Rather, a 50% threshold is by definition a "preponderance of the evidence" standard. It's the standard jurors are instructed to use in civil cases, when John Doe accuses Joe Blow of destroying his topiary garden with a runaway snowmobile. A preponderance-of-evidence standard absolutely should not be applied when deciding matters of criminal guilty or innocence, when deciding matters of life and death.

But I'm ahead of myself. First, I should explain the studies.

The third group of studies we consider herein is based on decision theory. Decision theorists argue that jurors vote to maximize their personal satisfaction. (This is also known as minimizing their personal dissatisfaction.) Decision theorists describe such satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) as "utility." According to decision theorists, jurors intuitively weigh four utilities:

1. Utility of acquitting the innocent
2. Utility of convicting the innocent
3. Utility of acquitting the guilty
4. Utility of convicting the guilty

Decision theorists simply ask potential jurors to rate the relative utilities on a common scale, say from 1 to 100, then calculate the person's decision threshold based on a logical and relatively straightforward equation. I refer the reader to the source for the equation rather than complicate this post further by trying to describe it.

Though decision-theory surveys may sound more convoluted than the direct and parallel surveys, my experience tells me there is some merit in the concept. I have independently arrived at a hypothesis that jurors most fear putting bad people back on the street. In decision-theory speak, they assign a substantial disutility to acquitting the guilty, and apply a high utility to convicting the guilty. They show less concern about acquitting or convicting the innocent, since they tend to assume the defendant must be guilty. Certainly the prosecuting attorney and the police and good honest citizens wouldn't attempt to convict an innocent person.

If you simply ask a potential juror to state the reasonable doubt threshold they would use, they will give you number somewhere near 100%, because they know that's what the answer is supposed to be. If you conduct more subtle parallel studies of guilty / not guilty versus probability of guilt, you get closer to the actual threshold jurors use. Even in the parallel studies, however, the jurors don't really feel the gut-wrenching fear of putting a murderer, rapist, armed robber, or child molester back on the street.

Decision theory surveys attempt to penetrate into those inner feelings. While I'm confident the decision-theory surveys provide a more reasonable result than merely asking people what threshold they would use, I'm not sure if decision-theory surveys are superior to parallel surveys. My guess is that the best answer lies somewhere between the two.

In any case, I present the summary of decision theory surveys below. As usual, click on the image to enlarge and clarify it.

So after three posts on reasonable doubt threshold surveys, what have we learned? I fear we have learned why we have so many innocent people are in prison.

If we vote guilty when we are only 85% certain of guilt, or 68% certain, or possibly only 55% certain (depending on which study is more accurate), we should not be surprised that we frequently get it wrong. We should not be surprised when some of the convicted protest their innocence as we slam the prison gate shut behind them.

Nor should we be surprised as some protest their innocence while we inject lethal fluids into them through a sterilized needle.

Watson and the Future of Everything: Continued

My posting has been scarce as of late. I've been involved with a project I wanted to finish as quickly as possible. Now I need to try to get back into a blogging rhythm. It's not always easy.

Last post was several days ago. (I'm being kind to myself.) It was Watson and the Future of Everything, in which I waxed poetic about the significance of IBM's Watson computer performing well on Jeopardy. I have seen various people express considerably less enthusiasm that I did, those people being concerned about the impact on jobs, and dissing on the Watson because it doesn't really understand, it just computes.

Both categories of Luddites are correct. Watson-like computers will enable people to me more productive in their work, and therefore more valuable in their work, and therefore better paid. Productivity generates wealth. Inefficiency breeds want.

And true enough: Watson doesn't really understand anything. It merely computes, sometimes badly. In that sense it is quite human.

IBM, on their website, offers three videos on three areas of application for Watson-like computers.

Healthcare: "Medical records, texts, journals and research documents are all written in natural language – a language that computers traditionally struggle to understand. A system that instantly delivers a single, precise answer from these documents could transform the healthcare industry."

Finance: "Enormous amounts of data are generated every day in the financial industry. Watson, the IBM computer system designed to compete on Jeopardy!, has the deep analytics capability that could help businesses extract knowledge from this data in order to identify patterns and make more informed financial decisions."

Customer Service: "IBM experts share their thoughts on how DeepQA technology could help transform the customer service industry into a faster, more accurate experience."

Wow!  Way to take something really exciting and make it boring. But IBM is a business and naturally focuses on those applications that can provide substantial return for all the money, time, and talent they have invested in Watson. When I was coming to know Watson, however, I was thinking differently. I was thinking that a Watson type computer could have kept Byron Case and Michael Ledford and a whole lot of other innocent people from ever being convicted.

Assume we have a computer that understands natural language and is designed to estimate probabilities of innocence. We would constantly feed it the latest findings in pathology, serology, ballistics, fingerprinting, fire science, and other forensic sciences. We would provide provide it with common sense insight into life, insight such as time cannot run backwards, people cannot be in more than one place at the same time, consistent stories are more likely to be correct than ever changing stories, snitches are usually less reliable than priests, confessions that violate physical laws are probably false.

Even before arrest, all parties involved in a case can feed Watson case information, ask Watson to provide a probability of guilt and/or innocence, and ask Watson to substantiate its assessment.

In the case of Byron Case, Watson could read the police report that said the victim was found with her eyes open at 3:47 AM, and the ME report that reported her corneas were clear. Watson could compare that  information against arcane knowledge (unknown to anybody involved in the case at the time) that corneas cloud over in less than three hours after death if the eyes remain open. Watson would realize that the victim died some time around midnight, that the state's primary witness claimed she actually witnessed the murder near sunset, and conclude that the state's primary witness was unreliable. Watson would realize further, from reading the police reports, that Byron had an unassailable alibi for the actual time of the murder. The probability of Byron's  innocence would be near 100%. The probability of his guilt would correspondingly be near 0%. Assuming the State was acting in good faith, they would not even charge Byron, much less convict him and sentence him to life without parole.

In the case of Michael Ledford, Watson could read descriptions of the fire scene photos and learn that the circuit breaker panels shows evidence of smoke damage within the panel but not around the panel. Watson could also read that those smoke patterns show some of the breakers popped to the closed position during the fire and some did not. Watson could read conflicting theories on how the fire started (either a candle tossed into a living room chair or a short in a living room light circuit.) Looking through the world's knowledge, it would find no correlation between candles thrown into chairs in a living room and simultaneous internal heating in a circuit breaker box in a bedroom. It would find, however, that on occasion circuit breakers fail to pop when the circuit shorts, and that causes them to overheat and smoke. That results in evidence of a fire both near the short and in the circuit breaker box. Even though the Michael Ledford had confessed (then quickly recanted), the evidence of fire at the circuit breaker box would prove the fire to be electrical rather than incendiary.

In the words of a great philosopher, you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. At least I hope not. Months ago, I wrote to Google about the possibility of coupling their computing power with their legal scholar database to help identify many of the quarter million people I calculate we have incarcerated today. I'm still waiting for an answer.

Late last week, I wrote to IBM about the possibility of using a Watson like machine to improve the quality of our judicial system. I did not propose removing the human element. I proposed only that we improve the accuracy of the system by increasing the quantity of information and quality of the analysis.

I heard back from IBM the next morning. The person who responded described the concept as "very interesting." Perhaps he was only being polite, but I'll take it. He explained he would pass the idea along to his supervisor who would reply in further detail. I now await that reply. I actually expect to hear something further from IBM, though not necessarily the answer I would like to hear.

My scoring right now is IBM 1, Google 0.

If I cannot interest IBM, I will try Microsoft. If I cannot interest Microsoft, I will try Wolfram Alpha (a mathematically based search engine.) Then I will try something else.

Our wrongful conviction problem is so serious, we need something on the order of a Watson computer coupled with a public acknowledgment of the problem to make even a dent in the number of people already (or soon to be) wrongfully incarcerated.

Stay tuned.

Watson and the Future of Everything

The world changed Monday night. Perhaps you missed it. Perhaps you were eating dinner or watching the news. Perhaps you were taking a walk or making love. Perhaps you were watching Jeopardy and did not fully appreciate the world changed before your very eyes.

On Monday, the two best Jeopardy players in the world squared off against IBM's Watson computer, and the world changed.

Let me begin by introducing the contestants.

On your far left is Ken Jennings. Ken won 74 Jeopardy matches in a row, and earned $2,520,700 in the process. He also earned $2,000 in his 75th game when he came in second to Nancy Zerg, who came in third during her next game. Jennings then won $500,000 when he placed second in the Jeopardy Ultimate Tournament of Champions. That's a grand total of $3,022,700.

It is almost statistically impossible that Ken Jennings won that many games in a row. Prior to Jennings' streak of 74 games in a row, the longest streak was a pitiful (only by comparison) 8 games in a row by Tom Walsh. Jennings streak was more than 9 times longer than Walsh's streak. By comparison, Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak, considered by many to be the greatest feat ever in baseball, is only 1.3 times as long as Pete Rose's 44 game streak, second longest in the modern era.

On your far right is Brad Rutter. Brad Rutter has never lost a Jeopardy game to another human. When Rutter first appeared on Jeopardy in 2000, contestants were limited to five games in a row. (That rule was eliminated in 2003, one year before Ken Jennings began his remarkable run.) Rutter, however, later won each of the three Tournaments of Champions in which he was invited to play.

In the third of those tournaments, the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, Rutter beat Ken Jennings and took home $2,100,000 for his efforts. In all, Rutter has earned $3,255,102 for his initial five Jeopardy games and his three Jeopardy tournaments, making him the top Jeopardy earner of all time.

In the center is Watson, a massively parallel IBM supercomputer.

Born in 2007, Watson has (at the hands of some amazing teachers) learned to understand the subtleties of natural language. Consider Watson's rapid fire questions to some of Jeopardy's ambiguous, nuanced questions in the practice session recorded before the formal contest.

Since Jeopardy might present any of an infinite number of convoluted answers to the contestants, there was no way Watson's teachers could simply program it to select the right question from a database of question/answer pairs. They had to teach Watson to understand natural language. That was the challenge. That's why they created Watson. It was to be the first computer to understand the intricacies and subtleties of natural language well enough to compete on Jeopardy.

Watson's knowledge is kept in much the same way as Google stores all its data. When faced with a Jeopardy answer, Watson uses keywords, much as Google does, to collect a long list of possible answers from its stored information.

It is at this point, however, that IBM has gone beyond Google and put itself back into the lead as the world's foremost computing company. Watson is programmed to use its natural language skills to decide which of the many possible answers is most likely correct, and to answer only if it is confident beyond some threshold value.

On its web site, IBM provides a 22 minute video explaining how sophisticated Watson's decision-making can be. Consider the Jeopardy answer "In May 1898 Portugal celebrated the 400th anniversary of this explorer's arrival in India." The graphic below represents one possible result Watson might quickly find. Based on a keyword search, Watson finds a match for "celebrated", "may", "anniversary", "Portugal", and "India". Watson also finds that the link is associated with some guy named Gary.

As it turns out, "Who is Gary?" is unlikely to be the question Jeopardy was searching for.

The link segment reads "In May, Gary arrived in India after he celebrated his anniversary in Portugal."  As humans, we can easily see Gary is not who we are looking for, because we understand natural language. No computer, other than Watson, shares that understanding.

For Google, the Gary link would be a terrific match. For Watson, however, it would be but one of many to be rejected as improbable. Instead, Watson would home in on a Vasco de Gama link, which reads "On the 27th of May in 1498, Vasco de Gama landed in Kappad Beach."

The astonishing point here is that the Vasco de Gama link has only one matching keyword, and that keyword is the commonly used and ambiguous word "may." Holy linguistics, Batman! There are millions and millions of documents out there with the word "may" in them. Why did Watson decide to consider this one?

Watson picked up on this link because Watson has been programmed, as have we humans, to apply temporal reasoning, geospatial reasoning, and statistical paraphrasing.

While the Vasco de Gama link doesn't actually mention 1898 as being the 400th anniversary of anything, it does mention the year 1498. Watson knows that 1898 minus 1498 is equal to 400, and  therefore recognizes two very strong clues in the link, strong clues missing from the Gary link.

Furthermore, while the Vasco de Gama link doesn't actually mention India, Watson knows that Kappad Beach is in India. It knows that from a few of the other millions of links it has in its memory. So that's another big clue.

Finally, Watson understands statistical paraphrasing. It knows that "arrival in" is a good match of "landed in."

Watson combines all the information at hand and assigns a high probability that Vasco de Gama is the correct result. No other answer it considers has a higher probability. Since the Vasco de Gama probability is greater than the confidence threshold, it buzzes in and says, in the best computerized voice to date, "Who is Vasco de Gama?"

When Watson finds a reasonably probable answer, it typically buzzes in (using a mechanical finger) more quickly than its human competitors. This too is impressive, given all the mental work it has to do. I learn from the video that if Watson used my home computer as its processor, it would need several hours to decide each question. Watson, however, uses thousands of processors working at the same time, working in parallel.

So how did all this pan out in the actual game? As I said in the beginning, the world changed on Monday night. Watson finished the first game (played over two nights) with $35,734. Rutter had $10,400. Jennings had $4,800.

After three days and two games, the totals were:

Watson: $77,147

Jennings: $24,000

Rutter: $21,600

In my next post, I'll discuss what this might mean to the quarter million people we have wrongfully incarcerated in America.