The wooden ball engraved with the perpetrator's name

I've just had a pre-vision that Yurenchu responded with links to many existing threads on the matter and pointed you to the FAQs.

So in order to save him the hassle, I'll give you my take on it. Which is simply that the incoming 'deja-vu' pre-vision of Burgess killing Lively could well have been erased before the balls had a chance to form.

Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoile

Either Burgess intercepted the ball with his name on it (just like how Anderton intercepted the ball with his name on it); or Wally The Caretaker was instructed to immediately dismiss and delete all incoming "deja-vus"/"echoes" before they result in carved balls with names on them (this matches karlhinze's explanation); or maybe the wooden ball system that extracts the names from the pre-vision datastreams wasn't part of the Pre-Crime system yet (because it was the early days of Pre-Crime, so it stands to reason that not all technology was in place or even invented yet).

By the way, Agatha's prevision in which Burgess kills Ann Lively was a minority report; the two other pre-cogs (Arthur and Dashiell) predicted that John Doe would kill Lively, so if the wooden ball system existed then the prevision alert would have been accompanied by a wooden ball with John Doe's name (and not Burgess' name) on it. Burgess' name would have only appeared on a wooden ball in a second prevision alert, after it was certain (or likely) that the threat by John Doe had been averted (but that second prevision would have been dismissed as an "echo"/"deja-vu").

See also my answers in the following earlier threads:

- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/board/thread/226536901
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/board/thread/210021469
- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/board/thread/237820547


@karlhinze: LOL, thanks karlhinze! However, there's nothing about this topic in the FAQ page, so that part of your prevision was incorrect. 

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