Quantifying Reasonable Doubt

Rutgers University Law Review, Vol. 72, Issue 2 (2020)

49 Pages Posted: 18 Aug 2018 Last revised: 12 Oct 2021

See all articles by Daniel Pi

Daniel Pi

University of New Hampshire School of Law (formerly Franklin Pierce Law Center)

Francesco Parisi

University of Minnesota - Law School; University of Bologna

Barbara Luppi

Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE) - Faculty of Business and Economics; University of St. Thomas School of Law

Date Written: August 5, 2018

Abstract

This article contributes in three ways to the prior literature on the reasonable doubt standard. First, it synthesizes the insular strands of historical, economic, jurisprudential, and doctrinal scholarship on reasonable doubt. Second, it advances a conception of the criminal standard of proof designed to avoid the various problems affecting earlier attempts to devise meaningful definitions of reasonable doubt. The definition proposed is that “reasonable doubt” be the standard of proof which minimizes the aggregate subjective expected social cost of false conviction and false acquittal. Judicial pronouncements of Blackstonian ratios (for example, that it is better that ten guilty go free than one innocent be convicted) are interpreted as judicial estimates of these variables, from which efficient reasonable doubt standards may be calculated. It is urged that courts adopt the precise numerical measures of certainty in jury instructions (for example, that a juror should only vote to convict if he is more than x% certain of the defendant’s guilt). Judicial pronouncements of Blackstonian ratios are collected from the caselaw of all fifty states and federal courts to encourage practitioners to test the refined conception in their jurisdiction.

Keywords: Reasonable Doubt, Standard of Proof, Blackstone's Ratio

JEL Classification: K14, K41

Suggested Citation

Pi, Daniel and Parisi, Francesco and Luppi, Barbara and Luppi, Barbara, Quantifying Reasonable Doubt (August 5, 2018). Rutgers University Law Review, Vol. 72, Issue 2 (2020), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3226479 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3226479

Daniel Pi (Contact Author)

University of New Hampshire School of Law (formerly Franklin Pierce Law Center) ( email )

Two White Street
Concord, NH 03301
United States

Francesco Parisi

University of Minnesota - Law School ( email )

229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

University of Bologna ( email )

Piazza Scaravilli 1
40126 Bologna, fc 47100
Italy

Barbara Luppi

University of St. Thomas School of Law

2115 Summit Avenue
Saint Paul, MN 55105
United States

Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE) - Faculty of Business and Economics ( email )

Viale Berengario 51
41100 Modena, Modena 41100
Italy

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