Voluntary Manslaughter? A Case Study with Meta-Argumentation with Supports

In a criminal case, the judge’s decision making often involves proving, beyond any reasonable doubt, the defendant’s intention to commit a crime from material vidence. A valid decision should be supported by some material evidence, and neither the material evidence itself nor the support that it gives to the conclusion should be invalidated by any other material evidence. Luckily, this sounds a familiar topic in abstract argumentation with supports. We describe an argumentation theory, which roughly corresponds to the tradition of evidential support, but which provides a meta-argumentation (or extended argumentation) framework where an argument can attack/support other argumentation components. We model our example of intention-to-kill in the theory.