Kvalitetssäkring av bevisprövningen i brottmål

Kvalitetssäkring av bevisprövningen i brottmål

Göran Lambertz published this article in Svensk Juristtidning in 2009 while serving as JK. The local PDF is the journal edition.

The article argues that Swedish criminal proof lacks a generally accepted quality-assurance method. It identifies confusion between a judge’s personal conviction and the objective proof requirement, the use of informal helper rules that lower the threshold, and inadequate testing of alternative explanations.

Its discussion of percentages is especially important. Lambertz records two attempted translations of “beyond reasonable doubt”: that the prosecution account must be at least 98 percent certain, or that convictions after denial should be correct in 98 percent of cases. He does not establish either number as law or measurement. He says percentage formulations are troublesome because the factual truth is usually unknown, making it impossible to verify that judgments are correct in 98 percent of cases. At most, he treats the number as an approximate explanatory aid.

The article grounds Probabilistic interpretations of beyond reasonable doubt and Rättssäkerhet in Swedish criminal cases.

Sources

  1. 2009-lambertz-kvalitetssakring-bevisprovning.pdf
  2. svjt.se