September 7, 2004

Jon Krakauer's compelling narrative of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, Into Thin Air, focuses on a strange and disturbing incident. As a deadly storm enveloped the mountain, Krakauer struggled to reach the relative safety of his expedition's highest camp.

Just short of the camp, at the crest of a steep ledge, he encountered Andy Harris, a New Zealand climber whom Krakauer had gotten to know well during the several weeks they had spent together on the mountain. Both men were completely exhausted and suffering from severe oxygen deprivation.

Advertisement

After a brief conversation, Harris attempted to slide down the icy ledge - something that he would never have done if he were thinking clearly. Sure enough, Harris lost his balance, flipped head over heels, and fell hard on the rocks at the base of the ledge.

Fearing his friend had broken his neck, Krakauer was relieved to see Harris stand up, wave to him, and stumble off into the mist toward the tents that were just a few dozen yards away.

The next morning, Krakauer awoke to the news that Harris was nowhere to be found. Shocked, Krakauer searched the camp, and found footprints that convinced him his disoriented friend must have somehow wandered off the short path leading to the tents, and fallen to his death off Everest's western face.

It would be months before Krakauer discovered the incredible truth: The man he had spoken with wasn't Harris at all, but another climber named Martin Adams. Adams, a short man who spoke with a pronounced Texas drawl, bore no resemblance to the 6-foot Harris, whose own speech was marked by a distinctive Kiwi lilt.

At the time of Krakauer's encounter with Adams, Harris was actually trapped on Everest's south summit, where he would die the next day. Devastated by his mistake (because of Krakauer's initial report, word had been sent to Harris' family that Harris was safely back in camp), Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air, in part, to come to grips with what had happened.

In the wake of the dismissal of rape charges against Kobe Bryant, many people have noted that now we will never know the truth of what happened that night in Eagle. The truth is that a criminal trial would have done little or nothing to reveal what took place between Bryant and his accuser.

Indeed, even if it were somehow possible to force both Bryant and his accuser to give completely candid accounts of their recollections of that evening, it would still be impossible to come anywhere close to removing all reasonable doubt regarding what actually happened.

A fact of human nature ignored (perhaps necessarily) by our legal system is that the human mind is a highly fallible thing, especially in situations of great stress. Faced with the intolerable, our memories reshape events so as to make the memory of them tolerable.

Outside our conscious control or knowledge, this process produces wildly conflicting versions of "the truth," not because people lie - although of course we do that often enough as well - but because participants in the same event can in perfect sincerity have radically different recollections of what took place.

The relevance of this point to historical disputes - consider, for example, the conflicting accounts of John Kerry's Vietnam service - is obvious enough. In the context of the Bryant trial, the lesson is clear: when two people engage in an ambiguous sexual encounter (the alleged victim has acknowledged that some of the sexual contact between her and Bryant was consensual), it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to determine the facts "beyond a reasonable doubt."

It ought to give us pause that so many prosecutors ignore this disturbing truth.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.

MORE CAMPOS COLUMNS »

Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.