Who is Hurt by the Liar?

Recently a friend and I discussed whether fabrication that was not "malicious" could be acceptable. She argued that perhaps a false story could be told as fact if it were entertaining and hurt no one. Indeed, we all read fictional books and watch fictional television shows, often ones "based on a true story," so does it matter whether the events happened to the storyteller or not, or even whether they happened to anyone, provided they are entertaining? Is there a great difference, ultimately, between falsehood and truth, and is truth very important anyway?

One could argue that Bethany Storro, pictured, hurt no one but herself when she told authorities that a stranger had thrown acid on her face when she, in fact threw acid on her own face for unknown reasons (though an interview on Oprah could be one). We could laugh at her stupidity or her desperate need for attention and forget about her. However, a few days after Storro's much-publicized "attack," a woman in Arizona was actually attacked with acid, apparently the victim of a copycat attacker. Storro is not the first person to be attacked in this manner, but she is one of the few whose stories have been aired on Good Morning America. In addition to throwing various innocent Washington women under suspicion, the faker's story appears to have lead directly to a real crime. The stories we tell don't have to be true, but we should be very wary of assuming that a lie will hurt no one simply because it has no malicious intent. Storro's intent may not be clear, but the consequences of her actions certainly are.

Forensic Fraud

I'm a big fan of those procedural forensic shows, the ones where the coroner or CSI or detective finds a bruising pattern or a cut or a bite mark that proves that the next-door neighbor really did kill the rude anthropologist, after all. I know that most of the science and technology in them is exaggerated, if not outright impossible, but it is nice to imagine that we could have the tools to almost always correctly identify the lawbreaker. That's why I was particularly drawn to this story wherein a man was convicted of arson, rape, and murder mostly based on the testimony of dentist Michael West, who claimed that teeth marks on the body matched those of a (mass-manufactured denture wearing) suspect. As the article explains,

West, who once claimed he could trace the tooth marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich at a crime scene to a defendant while excluding everyone else on the planet, has had to resign from two professional forensics organizations due to his habit of giving testimony unsupported by science.

West appears to be more or less a fraud, a man who dubiously matches teeth marks to the mouths of people who are already suspects and takes credit for closing difficult cases. I assume that acclaim drives him to do what he does, but his fraud has both put potentially innocent people on death row and could significantly undermine future use of forensic evidence in criminal trials. Does the dentist operate based on some thwarted sense of justice? Does he just "know" that suspects are guilty, and therefore fudges the evidence to put them in prison? Or does he disregard the suspects' plights altogether, wishing simply for congratulations for having solved a crime? Perhaps he's just trying to add some glamor to dentistry. I am no expert on this subject, of course, but neither do I claim to be.

On Narcissism and Liars

This is the story of Brian Blackwell, a 19-year-old man (or should I even say boy?) who told his friends he was a professional tennis player and brutally killed his parents when they discovered he had fraudulently opened and used credit cards in their names. He admitted to "manslaughter with diminished responsibility," claiming that his Narcissistic Personality Disorder diminished his responsibility. As this 2005 article discusses, "Blackwell's personality disorder meant he fantasised about unlimited success, power and brilliance" and he resorted to murder when his fantasy began to crumble.

It seems that nothing about Brian Blackwell's life was quite the truth, until he really, truly murdered his parents and then went on vacation with his girlfriend using their stolen credit cards. Is the liar's truth the lie he makes others believe, or the reality only he knows? It almost seems as though his lies about himself became so profound that he was no longer held accountable for his real actions, as though those were made untrue as well. Blackwell was the first person to use Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a criminal defense, and I wonder to what extent he opened the floodgates for others like him. Should Blackwell's actions get more leniency than those of criminals who aren't compelled to lie, who kill for money, or food, or love? Are his fantasies less controllable than others' avarice, gluttony, or lust?