Welcome to a new era of criminal justice, where evidence is optional, probability is the special of the day, and the burden of proof has quietly left the building.

In the traditional understanding of a criminal trial, the prosecution is expected to prove its case. The defendant is not required to disprove an imaginative theory, and a conviction is not supposed to rest on what merely seems likely.

But why let centuries of legal principles stand in the way of a perfectly convenient conclusion?

Today’s Special: One Serving of “Probably”

Imagine a courtroom where the question is no longer, “What evidence establishes that the defendant committed the act?” but rather, “Can we think of anyone else who might have done it?”

If no alternative suspect immediately springs to mind, congratulations. The case is practically solved. The missing proof can be replaced with a confident shrug, elegantly plated as judicial reasoning.

In Case R 706/2025/5226, the judgment’s reasoning included the conclusion that it was not probable that anyone else had thrown the object. That formulation raises a rather inconvenient question: when did the absence of an identified alternative become a substitute for proving the defendant’s guilt?

Perhaps the evidence was simply taking the day off. It happens. Even evidence deserves a holiday.

The New Rules of the Game

A Small Experiment in Probability

Suppose a fish disappears from a locked refrigerator. A cat was in the house. The cat has a history of staring at fish with suspicious intensity. No one saw the theft.

Is it possible that the cat stole the fish? Certainly.

Is it probable? Perhaps.

Has it been proven? Not even remotely.

Yet under the logic of probability-as-proof, the cat may soon be facing a criminal conviction, while the refrigerator remains stubbornly silent and the actual fish thief enjoys complete legal immunity.

One hopes the cat has access to counsel.

The Serious Joke

Satire works because it exposes the consequences of a premise by carrying that premise to its logical extreme. Here, the joke is not that courts make difficult decisions. They do. The joke is what happens when a standard of proof risks being replaced by a standard of plausibility.

A criminal conviction is not a creative-writing exercise. The court’s task is not to produce the most coherent story it can imagine, but to assess whether the evidence proves the charge to the required legal standard.

And if “probably” is allowed to do the work of proof, the question is no longer merely what happened in one case. It is what remains of the safeguard that proof was meant to provide.

Satirical commentary inspired by the reasoning discussed in Case R 706/2025/5226. The humour targets the logic of substituting probability for proof; it does not replace examination of the full judgment or applicable law.