The Supreme Court's decision in Diaz v. United States allows expert witnesses to testify about general drug trafficking practices, potentially leading juries to rely on statistical probabilities rather than case-specific evidence.

Noah Feldman raises concerns about the validity of the Supreme Court's decision, as it may encourage juries to conflate abstract statistical probabilities with specific case circumstances, undermining the "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. Other than when he suggests a slippery slope, the author's argumentation is largely valid here.

1. slippery slope •     The text suggests that allowing statistical generalizations in criminal cases could lead to a slippery slope where juries convict defendants simply because most arrested individuals are guilty of some crime, rather than considering the specific evidence.

Otherwise, juries might observe that most people arrested for a crime are guilty of something and conclude that they should convict any defendant before them.

The use of the word "might" somewhat mitigates the slippery slope fallacy by not definitively asserting that juries will convict defendants solely based on arrest statistics, but rather suggesting it as a possibility. The author is not making an outright claim that this extreme outcome will inevitably occur, which lessens the degree of the slippery slope fallacy present in that particular statement.