God's Imitator

A moment later, Lin Sizhi stood up from his seat.

However, he did not walk up to the podium, instead continuing to speak to all the Jurors from where he was.

"I think this line of speculation is debatable, because there are three major doubts:

"First, this kind of insurance fraud is actually impossible to pull off.

"The insurance industry is very mature. Insurance companies all conduct internal risk control, and different companies share information with one another.

"In a situation like this, where in a short period of time someone buys many different kinds of policies from multiple companies, with extremely large payout amounts, the likelihood that the insurance companies will pay out according to the contracts is almost zero.

"Second, to sign this kind of policy, the insured must personally sign to confirm.

"If, as you speculate, the man was actually unemployed, heavily in gambling debt, yet insisted on buying so many large policies for the woman, then as long as the woman was of normal intelligence, she ought to be on guard and refuse.

"Whether by deception or coercion, it would be very difficult to make the woman willingly sign.

"Third, the vast majority of policies nowadays are electronic; it’s not common to print them out as paper policies.

"In summary, I think this inference still has issues and requires further explanation, and we cannot rule out the possibility that the evidence is mistaken."

Tang Qing did not immediately refute him, but looked toward the Audience: "Then, I request that all esteemed Jurors verify the evidence."

On the small screen in front of him, Cheng Wen once again saw verification requests for those two pieces of evidence.

On this small screen, the Audience can view all submitted exhibits at any time, and can rotate and zoom them to examine various details.

But for Cheng Wen, he had no ability to tell the authenticity of the exhibits with the naked eye at all, so relying directly on the game rules for verification was more reliable.

After thinking it over, Cheng Wen pressed "Verify" for the "Policies", while ignoring the "Casino Card".

However, other Audience members still chose to verify the "Casino Card". Once 10 people were reached, the verification results for both exhibits appeared almost simultaneously.

[The "Multiple Policies" contain no false information.]

[The policies were personally signed by both the man and the woman; they are standard contracts from a legitimate insurance company, with no erasures or alterations.]

[The "Casino Card" contains no false information.]

[This card was issued by a certain top-tier casino to a veteran gambler.]

Cheng Wen couldn’t help but furrow his brow. "They’re all real?

"All the policies are real, meaning there isn’t a single fabricated or altered clause in them?

"Then this result is... really not good for Brother Lin."

...

After seeing the verification results for the two exhibits, Tang Qing once again stood, gave a slight bow, and then walked up to the podium.

"Thank you, all esteemed Jurors, for confirming the authenticity of the two pieces of evidence.

"Of course, I think Lawyer Lin’s doubts from a professional standpoint are very reasonable, so I will also try to offer a simple inference and explanation here.

"Indeed, insurance companies will stop at nothing to prevent insurance fraud, and in reality, the vast majority of such fraud attempts end in failure.

"However, we cannot use the mindset and logic of a rational, normal person to substitute for that of a desperate gambler with no way out.

"There are many real cases where someone tried to kill their wife or husband for the insurance payout. The methods are crude, and every single one of them ended with the fraud failing and the perpetrator going to prison.

"But that precisely shows that their behavior is ’the ignorance of the fearless’. It is exactly because they lack relevant legal knowledge that they attempt such things.

"Of course, one of Lawyer Lin’s questions is crucial: since these policies are genuine, the signatures of the insured were personally signed by the woman.

"Why would the woman sign these insurance documents that are so obviously malicious? If she was deceived by the man, what methods did he actually use to deceive her? This is something we must get clear.

"In addition, as for why the policies are in paper form rather than electronic, I can offer an explanation.

"Many people do not trust electronic data stored in their phones or email; they often believe that paper documents that they can see and touch are more reliable and real.

"During the execution of this plan, the man was very likely in a state of extreme anxiety the entire time. He might have been unable to control himself from repeatedly checking the insured amount, the beneficiary, and the contractual details, or using them to fantasize about the scene of successfully defrauding the insurance.

"So, he would have the desire to print out paper policies.

"Of course, all of this is my speculation and still requires more evidence for corroboration."

Bai Zilan looked around. No one raised any further objections.

"Then, esteemed Jurors, please cast your votes."

[Truth Vote]

[Do you believe that the ’Possibility Analysis – Killing Wife for Insurance Payout’ proposed by the Detective Tang Qing is the truth of the case?]

Soon, everyone finished voting.

[Now announcing the Truth Vote results:]

[Yes: 46 votes]

[No: 54 votes]

[’Possibility Analysis – Killing Wife for Insurance Payout’ is not recognized as the truth of the case.]

[The court will now recess; the trial will resume in 10 minutes.]

...

Seeing the voting result, Cheng Wen couldn’t help but knit his brows tightly.

"Quite a lot of people voted yes, Sister Lu!

"Obviously more than for Brother Lin’s previous theory.

"These policies are just too convincing..."

When he was voting, Cheng Wen had actually been a little flustered, because he truly wavered.

The "Policies" evidence provided by Tang Qing had been verified as real—that was a very solid point, and even Cheng Wen had to admit that "killing the wife for insurance" really was the most likely possibility at present.

Fortunately, when he cast his vote, he once again checked the insincerity detection status for both options and still didn’t trigger any detection.

This was good news. It meant the insincerity detection for the Truth Vote was relatively lenient: as long as you still had doubts about this possibility analysis and had reliable doubts grounded in evidence, you could vote "No".

But even so, the current situation was far from optimistic.

According to the game rules, as long as the votes exceed 60, that possibility hypothesis will be recognized as the truth of the case.

Right now, it was only 14 votes short, which really wasn’t a big gap.

Once Tang Qing managed to find more evidence later and gave relatively reasonable explanations for those doubts, his theory might be directly established.

"And also, Sister Lu, what is President Wang trying to do?

"The evidence he brought up looks obviously like he’s cooperating with Tang Qing!

"Didn’t the casino card nail down that the man is a gambling addict?

"If he wanted to help Brother Lin, shouldn’t he be looking for evidence that this couple had a good relationship? That way the case could keep leaning toward the ’lovers’ suicide’ direction.

"Now that both the ’Policies’ and the ’Casino Card’ have been confirmed as real, ’lovers’ suicide’ is basically impossible to establish, isn’t it?"