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Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: A Balanced Retributive Account
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Walen, Alec |
| Copyright Year | 2015 |
| Abstract | The standard of proof in criminal trials in many liberal democracies is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the BARD standard. It is customary to describe it, when putting a number on it, as requiring that the fact finder be at least 90% certain, after considering the evidence, that the defendant is guilty. Strikingly, no good reason has yet been offered in defense of using that standard. A number of non-consequentialist justifications that aim to support an even higher standard have been offered; all are morally unsound. Meanwhile, consequentialist arguments plausibly support a substantially lower standard — in some cases so low as to undermine the idea that punishment is what is at stake. In this paper, I offer a new retributive justification that supports excluding the instrumental benefits of punishment from the balance that sets the standard. The resulting balance supports a standard arguably in the ballpark of the customary understanding of BARD: a standard requiring that the fact finder have a high, though not maximally high, degree of confidence that the defendant is guilty. |
| Starting Page | 6 |
| Ending Page | 6 |
| Page Count | 1 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.2139/ssrn.2562563 |
| Volume Number | 76 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6552&context=lalrev |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6552&context=lalrev&httpsredir=1&referer= |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/48419/PDF/1/play/ |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2562563 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
