How Well Would You Do On A Jury?

Correct Answer
D. The fact that the husband abused the wife may tell us something about whether he is guilty, but the facts as presented are not enough for us to work out what it tells us.

Explanation
The facts as presented may well be true, but they are not very relevant.

They can tell us something about how likely an abused woman is to be murdered, but that is unhelpful, as in this case we already know that the woman was murdered.

What we need to know about is cases where women are abused by their husbands and then murdered by somebody. In those cases, who is most likely to be the murderer?

In fact, in such cases the husband is the murderer 80 per cent of the time. This information was not presented in the question.

Even this fact may be irrelevant. If more than 80 per cent of murdered women (whether abused or not) are killed by their partners, the presence of abuse cannot tell us anything.