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The conjunction fallacy can have significant implications in criminal justice. Given the fact in a criminal case that the defendant has prior convictions for smuggling antiquities, studies have shown that potential jurors are more likely to agree with the statement "the defendant committed murder to prevent an accomplice from talking to the police" than the statement "the defendant committed murder", in the absence of any other evidence. This is because of the bias to favor more specific statements as more probable than less specific statements. Thus an eloquent prosecutor or defense attorney can make an unsupported hypothesis more appealing by adding details even when logically this should make the hypothesis less likely.

The conjunction fallacy can have significant implications in criminal justice. Given the fact in a criminal case that the defendant has prior convictions for smuggling antiquities, studies have shown that potential jurors are more likely to agree with the statement "the defendant committed murder to prevent an accomplice from talking to the police" than the statement "the defendant committed murder", in the absence of any other evidence. This is because of the bias to favor more specific statements as more probable than less specific statements. Thus an eloquent prosecutor or defense attorney can make an unsupported hypothesis more appealing by adding details even when logically this should make the hypothesis less likely.