Their convictions rested on confessions that lacked motive and were reportedly extracted by torture.
A chatbot lacks motive: it has no particular reason to say what it says and it speaks without really listening.
The set's more open-ended moments felt hollow, as if lacking a motive.
Plagiarists like the one at Spring Lake Park High School near Minneapolis ("Lessons in the School of Cut and Paste," June 28) lack motive to reform.
Jerry Lee didn't lack motive or explosive stage antics when it came to belting out a song.
For instance, Daniel Haybron argues that it is necessary and sufficient for evil character to be utterly lacking in motives or sentiments of moral worth (Haybron 2002a and 2002b).
Mr. Artis, the F.B.I. spokesman, said the case was dubious from the start, because it lacked a motive.
What the second series lacked in motive force, it made up in its low weight of 450 pounds and attainable price of $550.
If Wall Street titans had "too much power" over policies regulating the financial industry, it's hard to see how a lower level of income inequality would have left their relative power much diminished.Are we to imagine that somewhat less titanic Wall Street operators would have lacked sufficient motive and opportunity to rig the regulatory structure in their favour?
4.51pm GMT Pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah's enthusiastic support for Malaysian opposition figure Anwar Ibrahim is a waving red flag indicating... not necessarily much of anything, William J. Dobson writes in Slate: More than a week after the Boeing 777 disappeared, we lack a motive, a clear suspect, or even a crime scene, but we have our "Anwar Ibrahim connection".
"If every time the alliance gets together we feel we have to invite Prime Minister Primakov, who lacks any motive to cooperate with the U.S., it will be tough to get anything done.
