Friday, February 25, 2005

Suspicious Minds

Despite what you may have heard on TV news, a suspect does not rob a bank. A suspect does not kill a person. A suspect does not commit whatever misdeed you care to mention.

A person does. A man. A woman. A somebody.

A man robs a bank. A woman kills a person. A man and woman commit whatever misdeed you can imagine.

When police apprehend someone and accuse them of committing one of these crimes, that someone becomes a suspect. But the crimes themselves were still committed by a person, because we know that the crimes occurred.

When someone goes on trial for an obvious criminal offense, such as burglary or murder, the actual damage is seldom the issue. The house has been broken into. The person has been killed. We can take these things as facts. The court decides whether the person on trial did those things.

The applications to news stories, I hope, are obvious.

What we don't write: "The suspect killed fifty people on the subway. Police arrested Bob Dylan and said he was their prime suspect."

What we do write: "A man killed fifty people on the subway. Police arrested Bob Dylan and said he was their main suspect."

You'll notice that by saying "suspect" instead of "man" in the first example we actually implicate Mr. Dylan more than in the second version. Not that I think he would do such things.