​Many modern theories of decision making recognize the fact that decisions do not take place in a vacuum. Individual preferences and knowledge, along with situational variables can greatly impact the decision process. In order to facilitate our research on verdict decision making we are interested in knowing certain factors about you, the decision maker. Specifically, we are interested in whether or not you actually take the time to read the directions; if not, then some of our manipulations that rely on changes in the instructions will be ineffective. So, in order to demonstrate that you have read the instructions, please select the sports items below that begin with the letter s and ignore the rest of these instructions. Below is a list of activities, select the ones you engage in regularly. Thank you.
    Court Case Summary

    1. At 7:03 P.M. on September 26, 2007, a heavy-set dark-skinned black male matching the defendant’s description entered the convenience store wearing a hooded jacket. He approached the counter, lifted his hood onto his head and proceeded to rob the manager of the store at gunpoint. The suspect, and his “look out,” fled with an undisclosed amount of money in a gold Jeep Cherokee.
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    ​2. What follows is a summary of the trial proceedings in the case of Cefco v. Alan Crowtzer. The defendant was charged with one count of Armed Robbery.
    ​3. In his opening statement, the prosecutor claimed the evidence would show that Alan Crowtzer robbed the Cefco at gunpoint during the evening of September 26, 2007. Crowtzer denies involvement in the robbery, but the evidence will prove that he had the means and opportunity.
    ​4. The prosecutor outlined his theory of the case. On the night of the armed robbery, Crowtzer with the help of an unidentified friend decided to rob a local gas station. The evidence presented by the prosecution included a positive identification of the defendant by the store clerk. The police also found money in the defendant’s closet that was very close to the amount reported stolen, and the defendant had a gun registered to his name. Crowtzer did not have substantial savings and desperately needed the money.
    ​5. The defense attorney opened by claiming that all the evidence is purely circumstantial. After all, Crowtzer never confessed. The defense claimed that the defendant was in the convenience store as a customer earlier that day, and that the defendant’s girlfriend provided an alibi indicating that he was not present at the store at the time of robbery. The defense also claimed that the gun registered in the defendant’s name was stolen several years earlier, though no police report was ever made. The defense also claimed that the money in the closet represented savings from the defendant’s job. It is clear that the prosecution has failed to prove its case. 
    ​6. The prosecutor began his closing argument by reminding the jury that a gas station was robbed, and someone had to pay for the damages. He fit the physical profile of the robber. The weapon was never found, but Crowtzer did own a gun and had ample time to dispose of it. In light of all the evidence, the defendant should be found guilty of armed robbery.
    ​7. The defense lawyer began closing argument by acknowledging Alan Crowtzer frequented the gas station on occasion. So what is the crime against Crowtzer? There was no confession and no weapon, only weak circumstantial evidence. The defense attorney concluded by arguing the prosecution has failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and that Crowtzer should be found not guilty. 
    Eyewitness Statement
     
    1.  The witness for the prosecution was Omar Patel, an Indian man who served as the cashier on the night of the incident. He positively identified the defendant as the man who robbed the convenience store the night of September 26, 2007. He was very confident in his identification. He stated that he would never forget the defendant’s face or the type of gun used during the robbery. He stated that he feared for his life during the short duration of the robbery and that is why he gave up the money.
    ​2. Patel rebuked the defense attorney’s notion that the defendant was in the store earlier on the same day, although he acknowledged that he didn’t remember the face of every person who walked in the store that day. He was then shown a photograph of a man who was known to be in the store earlier that day, before the robbery was committed. The eyewitness stated that the man did resemble the defendant, but stood by his identification of Alan Crowtzer, the defendant, as the man who robbed the store.
    Verdict Assessment
     
    Please consider all the evidence presented to you. Then, make a judgment as you would if you were passing final judgment on this particular case.
     
    1. On the case against Alan Crowtzer, do you find the defendant:
    ​2. Indicate the degree of confidence you have in the above verdict decision:
     
    0%       10        20       30       40       50       60       70       80       90       100%
     
    No Confidence                       Moderate Confidence                     Complete Confidence
    ​Additional reading you are required to know.
    What is the water cycle?
     
    What is the water cycle? The water cycle describes the existence and movement of water on, in, and above the Earth. Earth’s water is always in movement and is always changing states, from liquid to vapor to ice and back again. The water cycle has been working for billions of years and all life of Earth depends on it continuing to work; the Earth would be a pretty stale place without it.
     
    Where does all the Earth’s water come from? Primordial Earth was an incandescent globe made of magma, but all magmas contain water. Water set free by magma began to cool down the Earth’s atmosphere, and eventually the environment became cool enough so water could stay on the surface as a liquid. Volcanic activity kept and still keeps introducing water into the atmosphere, thus increasing the surface- and groundwater volume of the Earth.
     
    A quick summary of the water cycle
     
    The water cycle has no starting point, but we’ll begin in the oceans, since that is where most of the Earth’s water exists. The sun, which drives the water cycle, heats water in the oceans. Some of it evaporates as vapor into the air; a relatively smaller amount of moisture is added as ice and snow sublimate directly into the atmosphere, along with water from evapotranspiration, which is water transpired from plants and evaporated from the soil. The vapor rises into the air where cooler temperatures cause it to condense into clouds.
     
    Air currents move clouds around the globe, and cloud particles collide, grow, and fall out of the sky as precipitation. Some precipitation falls as snow and can accumulate as ice caps in glaciers, which can store frozen water for thousands of years. Snowpacks in warmer climates often thaw and melt when spring arrives, and the melted water flows overland as snowmelt. Most precipitation falls back into the oceans or onto land, where, due to gravity, the precipitation flows over the ground as surface runoff. A portion of runoff enters the rives in valleys in the landscape, with streamflow moving water towards the oceans. Runoff, and groundwater seepage, accumulate and are stored as freshwater in lakes.
    Not all runoff flows into rivers, though. Much of it soaks into the ground as infiltration. Some of the water infiltrates into the ground and replenishes aquifers (saturated subsurface rock), which store huge amounts of freshwater for long periods of time. Some infiltration stays close to the land surface and can seep back into surface-water bodies (and the ocean) as groundwater discharge, and some groundwater finds opening in the land surface and emerges as freshwater springs. Yet more groundwater is absorbed by plant roots to end up as evapotranspiration from the leaves. Over time, though, all of this water keeps moving, some to reenter the ocean, where the water cycle “ends.”

    Water storage in oceans: Saline water existing in oceans and inland sea
     
    The ocean as a storehouse of water
    The water cycle sounds like it is describing how water move above, on, and through the Earth … and it does. But, in fact, much more water is “in storage” for long periods of time than is actually moving through the cycle. The storehouses for the vast majority of all water on Earth are the oceans. It is estimated that of the 332,600,000 cubic miles of the world’s water supply, about 321,000,000 is stored in oceans. That is about 96.5 percent. It is also estimated that the oceans supply about 90 percent of the evaporated water that goes into the water cycle.
     
    During colder climatic periods more ice caps and glaciers form, and enough of the global water supply accumulates as ice to lessen the amounts in other parts of the water cycle. The reverse is true during warm periods. During the last ice age glaciers covered most one-third of Earth’s land mass, with the result being the oceans were about 400 feet (122 meter) lower than today. During the last global “warm spell”, about 125,000 years ago, the seas were about 18 feet (5.5 meters) higher than they are now. About three million years ago the oceans could have been up to 165 feet (50 meters) higher.
     
    Oceans in movement
     
    If you have ever been seasick (we hope not), then you know how the ocean is never still. You might think that the water in the oceans move around because of waves, which are driven by winds. But, actually, there are currents and “rivers: in the oceans that move massive amounts of water around the world. These movements have a great deal of influence on the water cycle. The Kuroshio Current, off the shores of Japan, is the largest current. It can travel between 25 and 75 miles a day, 1-3 miles per hour, and extends some 3,300 feet deep. The Gulf Steam is a well known stream of warm water in the Atlantic Ocean, moving water from the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic Ocean towards Great Britain, At a speed of 60 miles per day, the Gulf stream moves 100 times as much water as all the rivers on Earth. Coming from warm climates, the Gulf Stream moves warmer water to the North Atlantic.
     
    Evaporation: The process by which water is changed from liquid to a gas or vapor
     
    Evaporation and why it occurs
     
    Evaporation is the process by which water changes from a liquid to a gas or vapor. Evaporation is the primary pathway that water moves from the liquid state back into the water cycle as atmospheric water vapor. Studies have shown that the oceans, seas, lakes and rivers provide nearly 90 percent of the moisture in our atmosphere via evaporation, with the remaining 10 percent being contributed by plant transpiration.
     
    Heat (energy) is necessary for evaporation to occur, Energy is used to break the bonds that hold water molecules together, which is why water easily evaporates at the boiling point but evaporates much more slowly at the freezing point. Net evaporation occurs when the rate of evaporation exceeds the rate of condensation. A state of saturation exists when these two process rates are equal, at which point, the relative humidity of the air is 100 percent. Condensation, the opposite of evaporation, occurs when saturated air is cooled below the dew point (the temperature to which air must be cooled at a constant pressure for it to become fully saturated with water), such as on the outside of a glass of ice water. In fact, the process of evaporation removes heat from the environment, which is why water evaporating from you skin cools you.
     
    Evaporation drives the water cycle
     
    Evaporation from the oceans is the primary mechanism supporting the surface-to-atmosphere portion of the water cycle. After all, the large surface area of the oceans (over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by the oceans) provides the opportunity for such large-scale evaporation to occur. On a global scale, the amount of water evaporating is about the same as the amount of water delivered to the Earth as precipitation. This does vary geographically, though. Evaporation is more prevalent over the oceans than precipitation, while over the land, precipitation routinely exceeds evaporation. Most of the water that evaporates from the oceans falls back into the oceans as precipitation. Only about 10 percent of the water evaporated from the oceans is transported over land and falls as precipitation. Once evaporated, a water molecule spends about 10 days in the air.
     
    Sublimation: The changing of snow or ice to water vapor without melting
     
    Sublimation describes the process of snow and ice changing into water vapor without first melting into water. Sublimation is a common way for snow to disappear in certain climates

    Answer the following questions based on what you've read about the case and water cycle article.
    ​Second Verdict Assessment
     
    Please consider all the evidence presented to you. Then, make a judgment as you would if you were passing final judgment on this particular case.
     
    1. On the case against Alan Crowtzer, do you find the defendant:
    ​2. Indicate the degree of confidence you have in the above verdict decision:
     
    0%       10        20       30       40       50       60       70       80       90       100%
     
    No Confidence                       Moderate Confidence                     Complete Confidence
    ​Click submit once you have completed the readings and questions.