In the movie Minority Report…you have to believe that there’s a few crimes where people have been arrested for murder that they weren’t going to commit.
Let me give you a for instance.
By the rules of the movie, the pre-cogs can see premeditated murders further in advance than crimes of passion. So, let’s say there’s a love triangle with Billy, and Samantha and Jack.
We’ll say that Billy is married to Samantha, but that Samantha is having an affair with Jack.
Let’s say that Billy comes home early and sees that Samantha is having an affair with Jack as she kisses him at the door as Jack leaves on a Monday morning.
So far, this is similar to a scenario we see play out in the movie. But let’s say Billy immediately goes into the house and kills Samantha for cheating on him. This is a crime of passion, and the pre-cogs may not see this until maybe an hour before it happens… at best.
But…! What if, after learning that Billy killed Samantha, Jack, who was having an affair with Samantha, is furious and plots to kill Jack for the next three days.
It takes him three days to plot his revenge whilst he gets a black-market gun and waits for the opportunity to kill Billy…in this scenario the intended murder of Billy by Jack is pre-meditated, and not a spur of the moment crime of passion.
That means, the premeditated killing of Billy by Jack will get flagged by the pre-cogs… first.
Before the crime of passion murder of Samantha by her husband Billy.
Even though for Jack to kill Billy, Billy would first have to kill Samantha first.
But the pre-cogs wouldn’t see this first. And this is because they would see the premeditated murder first because that is how the pre-cogs abilities work.
This means that Jack will be arrested for killing Billy, even though Jack’s motive for killing Billy (that being Billy murdering Samantha) hasn’t happened and will never happen.
However…After Jack is arrested, Billy may then find out that that Jack was arrested for his intended murder, and figure out that Jack was having the affair with Samantha.
In this scenario, Billy will incorrectly assume that Jack planned to kill him,
probably to get him out of the way so Jack can be with Samantha. And now, Billy will assume that Samantha was probably not only having an affair with Jack, but was also co-conspiring to see Billy killed off and out the picture.
And so, Billy will once again go to kill Samantha as a crime of passion and will once again be arrested.
In this scenario, it’s arguable that Samantha could be arrested for conspiracy to kill Billy which she never intended to do in either scenario, but that’s only if Billy was to accuse her just before they arrest Billy. Because as you’ll know if you’ve seen Minority Report, the instant people are arrested for murder they are cryogenically frozen without trial.
So, it’s not really ever explored what happens to any co-conspirators in the world of Minority Report.
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