A Concept in Search of a Definition: The Effects of Reasonable Doubt Instructions on Certainty of Guilt Standards and Jury Verdicts

Eighty (6-person) juries heard 1 of the 5 reasonable doubt instructions in a trial that either had strong evidence for guilt or favored acquittal None of the instructions produced acceptable criteria of self-reported reasonable doubt, although instructions that informed juries to be firmly convinced...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Law and human behavior 1996-12, Vol.20 (6), p.655-670
Main Authors: Horowitz, Irwin A, Kirkpatrick, Laird C
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adjudication
Beyond a reasonable doubt
Criminal Conviction
Criminal Justice
Defendants
Guilty verdicts
Human
Juries
Jurors
Legal Evidence
Moral certainty
Not guilty
Reasonable doubt
Trials
Verdicts
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Eighty (6-person) juries heard 1 of the 5 reasonable doubt instructions in a trial that either had strong evidence for guilt or favored acquittal None of the instructions produced acceptable criteria of self-reported reasonable doubt, although instructions that informed juries to be firmly convinced (FC) elicited the highest standards of proof. The FC instructions yielded verdicts that tended to correspond with the evidence in both versions of the trial. FC juries focused proportionately more on the evidence and less on non-probative issues than juries given other instructions. Juries had lower self-reported standards of proof when the trial evidence was weak for conviction as opposed to when it was strong. The discussion addresses the surprisingly low self- reported standards of proof.
ISSN:0147-7307
1573-661X
DOI:10.1007/BF01499236