We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Reasonable Doubt, Robust Evidential Probability and the Unknown.
- Authors
Jellema, Hylke
- Abstract
Most legal evidence scholars agree that proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt requires the belief that the defendant probably committed the alleged acts. However, they also agree that this is not a sufficient condition, as this belief may be unreasonable. I focus on two popular proposals for additional conditions: (i) that the degree of belief should be robust and (ii) that it should be reasonable given the available evidence (should be an evidential probability). Both criteria face difficulties regarding their meaning and utility. I propose an interpretation which overcomes these difficulties and which combines the two conditions into a single criterion on which both conditions are about the possibility of overlooked, exculpatory information. Proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt requires that we are sufficiently certain that we did not miss such information for the sake of achieving accurate beliefs and a just error distribution. How certain we can be that we did not miss anything relevant depends on our higher-order evidence. One important type of higher-order evidence is whether the hypotheses under consideration are sufficiently detailed. This point leads to a novel way of combining the Bayesian and explanation-based accounts of rational legal proof.
- Subjects
EVIDENCE; CRIMINAL procedure; CRIMINAL law; BELIEF &; doubt; BAYESIAN analysis
- Publication
Criminal Law & Philosophy, 2024, Vol 18, Issue 2, p451
- ISSN
1871-9791
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11572-023-09685-5