  To endorse the curial view is not, of course, to say that we should do away with criminal punishment. But it is to say that the connection between trial and punishment is not merely instrumental. Some think that the facts that make punishment fitting—say, culpable wrongdoing—obtain independently of criminal proceedings themselves (Moore 1997, 33). We use those proceedings to ensure that said facts are highly likely to have obtained—that \(D\) is highly likely to have culpably committed a wrong. On the curial view, the fact that \(D\) has been tried and found guilty (or has entered a guilty plea) is itself part of what makes it fitting that \(D\) is punished. The fitting way to respond to criminal wrongdoing, on this view, is to call the wrongdoer to account for her wrong. To call \(D\) to account is to attempt to both (a) get \(D\) to answer for wrongdoing (as occurs in court), and (b) get \(D\) to confront wrongdoing for which she has no satisfactory answer (as occurs when \(D\) is punished). So it is only because \(D\) has first been tried and found guilty (or has entered a guilty plea) that punishment counts as a fitting response to \(D\)’s wrong (Gardner 2007, 80; Duff 2013a, 205). We can see the implications of this view by imagining a world in which trials are abolished, because some new-fangled machine allows us to identify culpable wrongdoers with perfect accuracy. Having no doubt that \(D\) is guilty, we simply impose punishment on \(D\). On the curial view, the punishments we impose are inherently defective: they are not imposed as part of a process of calling to account. Though our new-fangled machine might justify doing away with trials—once we factor in how expensive they can be—we would lose something of value in doing away with them.