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Breaking news as it breaks! Broken news after it broke!

Mistrial Declared in “NP-Drop Murder” Case; Linguist Sanctioned

In a shocking turn of events, Judge Crooks has declared a mistrial in the case of Ms. P. Dant, who has been accused of murdering her husband, Mr. Kni Alodgi, for the way that he spoke.

Ms. Dant’s defense attorneys have sought to portray Mr. Alodgi’s speech patterns as so offensive to any reasonable person that Ms. Dant’s alleged actions should be considered either self-defense, or the result of temporary insanity. The prosecutor has, contrariwise, sought to portray Mr. Alodgi’s speech as simply a dialect—albeit an unusual one—as valid as any other, and in no way justifying homicide.

Expert witness and linguist Niu Bea, from the University of South Central New Caledonia (USCNC), had spent two uneventful days on the stand explaining that Mr. Alodgi’s habit of “trailing off”, as Ms. Dant described it, could in fact be analyzed as a novel form of NP-dropping.

For example, in the sentence, “Did you put the₁... in the₂... ?”—the last words Mr. Alodgi ever spoke, according to earlier testimony—the₁ and the₂ could be interpreted as novel pronouns standing in for the full noun phrases (NPs). Or, in an analysis preferred by Ms. Bea—who commented that she “could totally get a dissertation out of that” before being reminded by Judge Crooks to stay focused on the matter at hand—as the residue of a dropped N̄. (Reports in the less linguistically savvy popular press have devolved to the usage of popular interviewee, Prof. David Ceramic, who prefers “dropped NP”, despite it being technically incorrect in the model described by Ms. Bea.)

All was going... well? for the prosecution—or at least it was mostly going, despite three jurors and the judge seeming to nod off during the more technical parts of Ms. Bea’s testimony on the distinction between descriptivism and prescriptivism.

Events came to a screeching halt near the end of Ms. Bea’s testimony, when she answered prosecutor E. Skillty, Esq.’s seemingly straightforward question, “In your professional opinion, such a dialect would be as equally valid as any other, correct?”

Ms. Bea’s initial reply was as engaging as the rest of her testimony—that is, not very: “With my academic descriptivist hat on, I have to say that, yes, such a dialect is as equally valid as any other...”

Had she stopped there, the prosecution might have won the day. However, she continued: “...though, I have to say—with my personal prescriptivist hat on—that such a dialect would be maddening to actually listen to. I can see why she stabbed him.”

The courtroom exploded into verbal chaos. Prosecutor Skillty tried to object to his own witness, and asked Judge Crooks to strike her comments from the record. Defense attorney A. Quittum, Esq., strongly objected to Mr. Skillty’s objection, saying that Ms. Bea had all but vindicated her client’s (alleged) actions.

After more than ten minutes of vigorous debate and vimful dissent from both sides, the Judge decided that, in theory, Ms. Bea’s comments should be stricken from the record, but that the jurors would almost certainly not realistically be able to disregard them. This was likely especially true for Jurors #4 and #9, who were reprimanded by the judge for yelling out, “Exactly!” and “That’s what I’m sayin’!” after Ms. Bea’s incendiary testimony. With that, Judge Crooks declared a mistrial and released the jury.

Judge Crooks is reported, by witness who asked not to be named, to have had many choice words for Ms. Bea, accusing her of wasting the people’s time and money by tanking the trial. She was sentenced to 3 days in jail, a $1500 fine, and 700 hours of community service for “egregious contempt unbecoming an academic expert”.

As news of the debacle spread, USCNC announced that it was shutting down its Expert Witness Internship Program immediately. USCNC did not respond to our request for comment, only issuing a short statement: “The... has decided that it is in the best interests of the... if we close down the...”.

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