Before the promotion-winning season of 2013/14, there had been so little to enjoy over the previous decade. League One was fun as it turned out, if only to rediscover a winning feeling lost for six years, but the two Championship play-off semi-final heartaches that followed weren’t so much.

What about situations where the evidence does not refute the defendant’s story, as in the Venray case? In that case the key question was which of two competing stories to accept, a situation that is best captured by the odds-version of Bayes rule. There the court noted that the evidence did not discriminate between these stories. Whether it was the husband who killed his wife or someone else, either way, we would expect to find the kind of evidence that was found (such as the shoe prints and the blood stains). This means that the likelihood ratio is close to 1. So, the evidence did not significantly change the prior probability of either explanation. The case then went to the Supreme Court. It decreed that while courts should ideally point to evidence that refutes the explanation, 3 they can also reject alternative explanations even when there is no evidence that refutes it. In particular, the Supreme Court distinguished three grounds for such a rejection. First and second, courts can argue that the explanation ‘did not become plausible’ or that it is ‘not credible’. Third, some explanations are so ‘highly improbable’ that they require no response at all. Suppose that the defendant’s story is weak and that the prosecution’s case is strong. This means that if no further evidence or arguments were adduced, the defendant would most likely lose the case and be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So, if the defendant tells a story that is initially improbable, he risks losing the case if no new evidence confirms his story. The defendant may then have a burden to introduce new arguments or evidence that would make the court decide in his favor or he risks losing the case. 9

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In fact, Leicester have won an incredible 14 matches by a single strike this season – seven more than Arsenal, and eight better than Tottenham and Manchester City. This ruling is important, because it set forth a framework for how courts should deal with the stories that defendants tell. However, it was also a nebulous ruling. The Supreme Court did not offer any explanation of the phrases it introduced, nor did it specify how these terms should be applied. As a result, both legal scholars and courts have been struggling to make sense of this ruling. In this case comment I offer an interpretation of the ruling. 4 This interpretation makes the ruling understandable and coherent with the legal rules and epistemic aims of the (Dutch) criminal law system. These aims are to minimize erroneous decisions, to make the decisions legitimate by making them understandable to others and to reach such decisions efficiently. Furthermore, I reflect on how courts can judge whether explanations are ‘implausible’, ‘incredible’ or ‘highly unlikely’. Vardy broke a Premier League goalscoring record, Mahrez won the PFA Player of the Year award and next season they have the sweet sensation of Champions League football heading to the East Midlands – as England’s Pot 1 representatives, no less. But they know things won’t be like this again.

What about justifications other benefit of reflecting on one’s reasoning? My proposal is that the more difficult it is to see why an explanation is improbable, the more room for error there is. However, when an explanation’s improbability is obvious, the reasoning required to understand its probability does not require much thought. Hence, there is less to be gained by carefully spelling out one’s reasoning to see whether this reasoning is sound. For instance, the court does not have to carefully reflect on whether they might be making an error when they assume that mind controlling aliens do not exist. My account is broadly Bayesian in that I use the language of Bayesian epistemology to clarify the necessary distinctions (more on this in Section 3). I use this framework to precisely define and distinguish different terms that, in colloquial settings, all relate to the probability of an explanation, such as ‘plausible’, ‘credible’ and ‘probable’, in Sections 4–6. However, I first explain the Venray murder case in more detail. 2. The Venray murder case So, the Supreme Court’s ruling is about how courts should deal with cases in which the evidence does not ‘refute’ a defendant’s story, but they still wish to reject this alternative explanation. Before moving on to my interpretation of this ruling, I want to discuss both situations in which the court can point to evidence that refutes the defendant’s story and situations in which the court can reject this explanation though no refuting evidence exists. I analyse both situations using a Bayesian framework. 3. Rejecting stories with and without evidence

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In the Venray murder case, the Dutch Supreme Court determined on what grounds courts may reject the alternative explanations offered by defendants and when they should justify their decision to do so. In this case comment I offered an interpretation employing Bayesian probability theory. At the heart of the Supreme Court’s ruling is the idea that courts can reject a defendant’s explanation even in cases where the evidence does not refute this explanation. While rejecting the story by referring to a ‘smoking gun’ (i.e. refuting evidence) may be the ideal, other responses are possible too. The Supreme Court distinguishes three categories. First, some explanations can be rejected because they ‘did not become plausible’. I argued that whether an explanation needs to ‘become plausible’ during the criminal proceedings depends on its inherent plausibility at the time it is offered—its prior probability. If an explanation with a low prior probability does not become probable by means of the evidence, then the explanation fails to create a reasonable doubt. Second, some explanations are ‘incredible’. Whether an explanation offered by a defendant is probable partially depends on evidence about the credibility of the defendant. Finally, some explanations are so ‘highly improbable’ that the court does not have a duty to respond to them. I argued that what distinguishes these explanations from explanations that the court should respond to is that their improbability is obvious. When an explanation is obviously improbable, the court would not serve the goals of making its decision understandable by offering a response. A duty to respond would then only reduce the efficiency of the decision process. Next season the bigger clubs can reclaim their places atop the pile, and even make their plays at trying to buy Leicester’s best players. They might just succeed.