From what I understand, the study you’re referencing says that a given juror must be on average 25% certain of innocence for a defendant to not be declared guilty. However, them going to jail requires that the entire jury agree that they’re guilty. Some of the jurors will need higher certainty, and there will be variations in how they interpret the evidence. As such, it sounds like someone would actually need a lot more evidence to be declared guilty.
They can be tried repeatedly until they get all guilty or all innocent, but I don’t think that actually happens much. The courts are overtaxed as it is.
For one—IIRC, the 25% figure was based on the jury as a whole, rather than individual jurors.
And for another—I would actually be more surprised if my ‘evolution of society’ reasoning turned out to be true, then if I were mistaken. It’s mainly an attempted backfill to try to figure out just how the jury system would end up using ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ and resulting in getting as close as possible to convicting ‘people who are more likely than not to break the law in the future’.
(I can’t seem to find the study in question with some quick Googling. I have a memory that the 75% certainty figure was for low-level crimes, such as theft, and that when the sentence was higher, such as for capital crimes, then juries tend to need to have a higher level of confidence before they’ll issue a guilty verdict; but that might have been a different study.)
You’re saying that it evolves towards a local optimum because the nations that do it badly fall?
I think No Evolutions for Corporations or Nanodevices applies here.
From what I understand, the study you’re referencing says that a given juror must be on average 25% certain of innocence for a defendant to not be declared guilty. However, them going to jail requires that the entire jury agree that they’re guilty. Some of the jurors will need higher certainty, and there will be variations in how they interpret the evidence. As such, it sounds like someone would actually need a lot more evidence to be declared guilty.
They can be tried repeatedly until they get all guilty or all innocent, but I don’t think that actually happens much. The courts are overtaxed as it is.
For one—IIRC, the 25% figure was based on the jury as a whole, rather than individual jurors.
And for another—I would actually be more surprised if my ‘evolution of society’ reasoning turned out to be true, then if I were mistaken. It’s mainly an attempted backfill to try to figure out just how the jury system would end up using ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ and resulting in getting as close as possible to convicting ‘people who are more likely than not to break the law in the future’.
(I can’t seem to find the study in question with some quick Googling. I have a memory that the 75% certainty figure was for low-level crimes, such as theft, and that when the sentence was higher, such as for capital crimes, then juries tend to need to have a higher level of confidence before they’ll issue a guilty verdict; but that might have been a different study.)