IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v212y2023icp873-886.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An experimental exploration of reasonable doubt

Author

Listed:
  • Aimone, Jason A.
  • Hudja, Stanton
  • Law, Wilson
  • North, Charles M.
  • Ralston, Jason
  • Rentschler, Lucas

Abstract

The “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard is a constitutional requirement in U.S. criminal cases, but jury instructions on “reasonable doubt” vary across jurisdictions. We use a controlled experiment to analyze the relationship between the definition of reasonable doubt and juror decisions. In our novel (pre-registered) experiment, we vary the definition of reasonable doubt between subjects and elicit the level of evidence required for subjects to convict a defendant. We analyze juror decisions under two state definitions that are markedly different (Wisconsin and West Virginia) and analyze juror decisions when reasonable doubt is not explicitly defined. We find similar behavior in each treatment. We ran three additional treatments to determine why behavior does not seem to vary across definitions. Our data is consistent with subjects having pre-conceived notions of reasonable doubt that are not affected by jury instructions.

Suggested Citation

  • Aimone, Jason A. & Hudja, Stanton & Law, Wilson & North, Charles M. & Ralston, Jason & Rentschler, Lucas, 2023. "An experimental exploration of reasonable doubt," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 873-886.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:212:y:2023:i:c:p:873-886
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2023.05.028
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268123001804
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.05.028?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Briggs Depew & Ozkan Eren & Naci Mocan, 2017. "Judges, Juveniles, and In-Group Bias," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(2), pages 209-239.
    2. Clot, Sophie & Grolleau, Gilles & Ibanez, Lisette, 2018. "Shall we pay all? An experimental test of Random Incentivized Systems," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 93-98.
    3. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    4. Jeffrey J. Rachlinski & Chris Guthrie & Andrew J. Wistrich, 2007. "Heuristics and Biases in Bankruptcy Judges," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(1), pages 167-186, March.
    5. Andreas Glöckner & Christoph Engel, 2013. "Can We Trust Intuitive Jurors? Standards of Proof and the Probative Value of Evidence in Coherence‐Based Reasoning," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 10(2), pages 230-252, June.
    6. Harrison, Glenn W, 1994. "Expected Utility Theory and the Experimentalists," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 223-253.
    7. Aimone, Jason A. & North, Charles & Rentschler, Lucas, 2019. "Priming the jury by asking for Donations: An empirical and experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 158-167.
    8. Cheryl Boudreau & Mathew D. McCubbins, 2008. "Nothing But the Truth? Experiments on Adversarial Competition, Expert Testimony, and Decision Making," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(4), pages 751-789, December.
    9. Cheryl Boudreau & Mathew D. McCubbins, 2009. "Competition in the Courtroom: When Does Expert Testimony Improve Jurors' Decisions?," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(4), pages 793-817, December.
    10. Joep Sonnemans & Frans van Dijk, 2012. "Errors in Judicial Decisions: Experimental Results," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 28(4), pages 687-716, October.
    11. Burke, Michael S & Carter, John R. & Gominiak, Robert D. & Ohl, Daniel F, 1996. "An Experimental Note on the Allais Paradox and Monetary Incentives," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 617-632.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Voslinsky, Alisa & Azar, Ofer H., 2021. "Incentives in experimental economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    2. Andersen, Steffen & Harrison, Glenn W. & Lau, Morten Igel & Rutström, Elisabet E., 2010. "Behavioral econometrics for psychologists," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 553-576, August.
    3. Ulrich Schmidt & Christian Seidl, 2014. "Reconsidering the common ratio effect: the roles of compound independence, reduction, and coalescing," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 77(3), pages 323-339, October.
    4. Christoph Engel, 2022. "Judicial Decision-Making. A Survey of the Experimental Evidence," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2022_06, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    5. Albertazzi, Andrea & Ploner, Matteo & Vaccari, Federico, 2021. "Welfare in Experimental News Markets," SocArXiv 5j2w8, Center for Open Science.
    6. Jinkwon Lee, 2007. "Repetition And Financial Incentives In Economics Experiments," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 628-681, July.
    7. Steffen Huck & Wieland Müller, 2012. "Allais for all: Revisiting the paradox in a large representative sample," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 261-293, June.
    8. Huck, S. & Müller, W., 2007. "Allais for All : Revisiting the Paradox," Other publications TiSEM 07a8abb4-e971-4b54-83d2-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Etchart-Vincent, Nathalie, 2007. "Expérimentation de laboratoire et économie : contre quelques idées reçues et faux problèmes," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 83(1), pages 91-116, mars.
    10. Bayrak, Oben, 2016. "Another Solution for Allais Paradox: Preference Imprecision, Dispersion and Pessimism," MPRA Paper 71780, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Pavlo Blavatskyy & Valentyn Panchenko & Andreas Ortmann, 2023. "How common is the common-ratio effect?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(2), pages 253-272, April.
    12. Maria J. Ruiz Martos, 2018. "Sequential Common Consequence Effect and Incentives," ThE Papers 18/04, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    13. Fan, Chinn-Ping, 2002. "Allais paradox in the small," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 411-421, November.
    14. Simona Fabrizi & Steffen Lippert & Addison Pan & Matthew Ryan, 2022. "A theory of unanimous jury voting with an ambiguous likelihood," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 399-425, October.
    15. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Duffy, John & Kim, Sun-Tak, 2014. "Compulsory versus voluntary voting: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 111-131.
    16. Yun‐chien Chang & Theodore Eisenberg & Han‐Wei Ho & Martin T. Wells, 2015. "Pain and Suffering Damages in Wrongful Death Cases: An Empirical Study," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(1), pages 128-160, March.
    17. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.
    18. Shmuel Leshem, 2010. "The benefits of a right to silence for the innocent," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(2), pages 398-416, June.
    19. Thomas Buser & Huaiping Yuan, 2023. "Public Speaking Aversion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(5), pages 2746-2760, May.
    20. Neilson, William S. & Winter, Harold, 2005. "The Elimination of Hung Juries: Retrials and Nonunanimous Verdicts," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 1-19, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Reasonable doubt; Criminal justice; Experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • K40 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:212:y:2023:i:c:p:873-886. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.