About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

2 Crim. L.F. 1 (1990-1991)

handle is hein.journals/crimlfm2 and id is 1 raw text is: Autumn 1990 Acquitting the Guilty: Two Case Studies on Jury Misgivings and the Misunderstood Standard of Proof H. Richard Uviller* INTRODUCTION W hile most verdicts in criminal cases are probably true or nearly so,1 jurors occasionally err. Counting, or even estimating, the number of jury mistakes is virtually impossible, however, since we know of no means of validating verdicts that is more reliable than the jury trial itself.2 For the * Professor of Law, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.A.; B.A., Harvard University 1951; LL.B., Yale University 1953. The author expresses ap- preciation for helpful comments from Professors Albert Alschuler, Joseph Grano, Henry Monaghan, and Lloyd Weinreb. Useful work was also contributed by my student research assistants, Nicholas Connon and Jack Yoskowitz. Research for this article was supported in part by the Walter E. Meyer Fund. ' I offer a working definition of true and false verdicts infra pp. 3-6. By nearly true, I mean those verdicts in which the grade or degree of the crime of which a defendant is convicted does not match the statutory definition of the act the defendant actually committed. Not infrequently, the jury's processes of ac- commodation, if not outright misunderstanding, lead it to return a verdict of guilty that accurately reflects the involvement of the defendant in the crime but mislabels the crime the defendant's actions constitute-generally by understating the level of culpability. 2 In some cases, and perhaps increasingly as technology is refined, we have scien- tific evidence linking a defendant to a crime or clearing the defendant. But even in those cases we will never be in a position to measure human verdicts against laboratory results. Forensic science is an element of the traditional trial process, not an independent means of validation. Some students of the jury process have 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most