How a “Reasonable Doubt” Instruction Affects Decisions of Guilt

Daniel B. Wright · Melanie Hall

46 citations0/0 files storedBasic and Applied Social Psychology

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Jury Decision Making Processes Legal processes and jurisprudence Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics

Abstract

Jurors are instructed to render a guilty verdict if they feel the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury is often told that this does not mean an absolute certainty of guilt and that even if it were possible to imagine a scenario in which the defendant is innocent, a guilty verdict may still be appropriate. Here, participants read a case summary. They were either told to say that the defendant was guilty if they believed in guilt beyond a reasonable doubt or were given more detailed instruction stressing that they did not have to be absolutely certain of guilt to give a guilty verdict. In Experiment 1, participants provided “think-aloud” protocols. Content analysis revealed that those who were given this instruction often used the phrase reasonable doubt to justify their guilty verdicts by saying that although they were not certain of the defendant's guilt, their belief exceeded the reasonable doubt threshold. None of the participants in the control group did this. Experiment 2 was designed to test if the instruction affected belief in guilt and the reasonable doubt threshold quantitatively. The instruction affected both people's belief in guilt and the threshold that they used to define reasonable doubt. The implied values for reasonable doubt were 63% for those who received the instruction and 77% for the control group. Implications for jury decision making are discussed.

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References

1977Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes.1992Explaining the evidence: Tests of the Story Model for juror decision making.1999Stimulus Sampling and Social Psychological Experimentation 1991Explanation, imagination, and confidence in judgment.2001Jury decision making: 45 years of empirical research on deliberating groups.1976Guilt beyond a reasonable doubt: Effects of concept definition and assigned decision rule on the judgments of mock jurors.1991“Beyond Reasonable” Doubt and “Probable Cause”1996The Difference between Blackstone-Like Error Ratios and Probabilistic Standards of Proof

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