ISSN : 2093-3843
In a criminal trial, the defendant is found guilty only when the prosecution proves the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Current study aims to understand how judges form the belief that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In order to understand the factors influencing the formation of the belief in the defendant's guilt and the ways in which those factors are applied to the case, the rulings of 28 criminal cases for which‘beyond a reasonable doubt' standard was the primary reason for reversal of the original judgment were subjected to content analysis. Several factors that tend to be influenced by the subjectivity of the judge caused the discrepancy between the courts' decisions: The veracity of statements made by the defendant or the victim, the probative value and admissibility of evidence, and the scientific evidence presented by an expert. It was also found that the judges considered the consistency of those factors with other evidence comprehensively so as to make decisions whether the overall evidence in the case in hand would be strong enough to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In discussion, the remedies, which would decrease the inconsistency between judges' assessments of the factors that identified in this study so that minimize the impact of judge's subjectivity in applying the standard to the cases were proposed.
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