>One of the earliest attempts to quantify reasonable doubt was a 1971 article by Rita Simon and Linda Mahan, "Quantifying Burdens of Proof: A View from the Bench, the Jury, and the Classroom." In a later analysis of the question ("Distributions of Interest for Quantifying Reasonable Doubt and Their Applications," 2006[10]) , three students at Valparaiso University presented a trial to groups of students. Half of the students decided the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The other half recorded their perceived likelihood, given as a percentage, that the defendant committed the crime. They then matched the highest likelihoods of guilt with the guilty verdicts and the lowest likelihoods of guilt with the innocent verdicts. From this, the researchers gauged that the cutoff for reasonable doubt fell somewhere between the highest likelihood of guilt matched to an innocent verdict and the lowest likelihood of guilt matched to a guilty verdict. From these samples, they concluded that the standard was between 0.70 and 0.74.
>One of the earliest attempts to quantify reasonable doubt was a 1971 article by Rita Simon and Linda Mahan, "Quantifying Burdens of Proof: A View from the Bench, the Jury, and the Classroom." In a later analysis of the question ("Distributions of Interest for Quantifying Reasonable Doubt and Their Applications," 2006[10]) , three students at Valparaiso University presented a trial to groups of students. Half of the students decided the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The other half recorded their perceived likelihood, given as a percentage, that the defendant committed the crime. They then matched the highest likelihoods of guilt with the guilty verdicts and the lowest likelihoods of guilt with the innocent verdicts. From this, the researchers gauged that the cutoff for reasonable doubt fell somewhere between the highest likelihood of guilt matched to an innocent verdict and the lowest likelihood of guilt matched to a guilty verdict. From these samples, they concluded that the standard was between 0.70 and 0.74.