Picture you as a juror in a murder trial. The star witness for the prosecution claims to know that his neighbor has killed someone. There is no evidence of a crime, no murder weapon, and no motive. No body has been found, and no one is missing. The witness has given the name of the victim and his address. After a very thorough investigation, however, no evidence has been found supporting the existence of the victim.

The witness testifies that an "angel" presented him with a DVD on which was a recording of the accused neighbor committing the murder. Our witness has not actually watched the DVD, as it is in a foreign format that will not play on his Blu Ray. He claims though, to have seen the recording by looking at a magical rock placed in the bottom of his hat.

The prosecution witness is backed up by 11 of his closest friends and relatives. Three of them have signed a statement declaring that an angel showed them a DVD case which appeared to contain a DVD. They were told by the angel that the DVD contained documentation of the murder. They never saw the movie, but they are quite sure they had seen a genuine DVD. Eight of the witnesses' closest friends and family testified that although they never saw the angel or watched the movie, they were shown a plastic case containing a DVD. Some of them were only allowed to handle the DVD through a brown paper bag, but they are pretty confident that it was a real DVD. They testify that they believe the witnesses' story about the angel and the DVD.

The witness is asked by the court to provide the DVD as evidence, but unfortunately, the angel has taken back the DVD for safe keeping.

As a side note, the star witness was convicted last year of being a con man. He was found guilty of conning several people out of money by telling them that he had a magic rock that could reveal the location of buried treasure. This is the same rock he now claims allows him to view recordings on foreign DVD's that can't be played on U.S. DVD players.

As a juror, are you convinced?

(Please post criticisms and suggestions for improvement) (idea from example on mormon think)

Murder is dramatic and could close minds in defensiveness right from the start.

Maybe the DVD instead contains evidence that the neighbor has found the Fountain of Youth (or that the witness has found the Fountain of Youth) or something like that?

Otherwise, it looks like a pretty good analogy.

My only remark would be that in the case of the BoM, there is a body. The issue is who killed it and how. Maybe you can do something like an unidentified body with your witnesses claiming to know who it is and what happened.

I was thinking the body is the missing people of the BOM. What is it for you?

You should include that the 8 witnesses aren't actually brought to the courtroom to confirm that they signed the alleged statement. The court only assumes they signed it by their lack of appearance in rebuttal.

Of the 3 witnesses who do appear and testify, one of them is suspected of delivering video editing software and some raw footage to the star witness, and the other two claim that they didn't actually see the angel that showed them the DVD, but rather felt a certainty that the angel was there. As you said, they claimed to have seen the DVD, but not actually watched it, or at least only watched the menu screen.

One of them, Martin Harris, claimed to have watched a copy of the footage and actually provided it as evidence for the court. However, upon investigation, the court finds nothing remotely useful or relevant in the footage (look up the Anthon characters). The prosecution argues that there may have been a mistake and that it can't be confirmed that this was the actual footage.

The parallels can go on and on.