Quantifying Reasonable Doubt
![handle is hein.journals/rutlr72 and id is 471 raw text is:
QUANTIFYING REASONABLE DOUBT
Daniel Pi,* Francesco Parisi,t and Barbara Luppitt
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 455
II. BACKGROUND...................................................................................... 459
A. The Origins of Reasonable Doubt ........................................... 459
B. The Search for a Definition................................................. 463
III. INTERPRETING REASONABLE DOUBT................................................. 469
A. Articulable Doubt .................................................................... 469
B. Reasonable Person's Doubt ..................................................... 472
C. Probabilistic Doubt ................................................................. 477
1. Juror Responsiveness..................................................... 477
2. Frequency and Certainty ............................................... 485
3. Ratio of Social Costs ....................................................... 489
4. Heterogeneity and Tailoring the Standard................... 492
5. Merging Doctrinal f3 and Efficient f ............................. 495
IV. THE REASONABLE DOUBT STANDARD BY JURISDICTION ................... 499
V . C ON CLU SION ..................................................................................... 507
I. INTRODUCTION
In a criminal trial, the prosecution bears the burden of proving the
defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The principle is a
cornerstone of the common law:1 every criminal conviction in the United
* Mitchell Hamline School of Law. E-mail: daniel.pi@mitchellhamline.edu.
t University of Minnesota, School of Law and University of Bologna, Department of
Economics. E-mail: parisi@umn.edu.
ft University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Department of Economics and John
Hopkins University. E-mail: barbara.luppi@unimore.it. Many thanks to Vincent Todd,
Lokys Gust, Jessica Ford, Ryan Bravo, Odise Carr, Favio Ramirez-Caminatti, and Lisa
Kaster for their invaluable research assistance. Special thanks also to Tomasz Mielniczuk
for his insightful suggestions and editorial assistance.
1. See United States v. Pepe, 501 F.2d 1142, 1143 (10th Cir. 1974) ([W]e recognize
that the reasonable doubt standard is a constitutional cornerstone of the criminal
justice system.); see also Herschel E. Richard, Jr., Insanity-The Burden of Proof, 30 LA.
L. REV. 117, 124 (1969).
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Quantifying Reasonable Doubt
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