论绝对确定性和死刑

Absolute Certainty And The Death Penalty

近年来死刑误判案件的披露引起了人们对如何减少此类错误的重新关注。因此,建议提高死刑案件中陪审团成员对被告人罪行确定性的研究者们一致呼吁适用高于排除合理怀疑的证明标准。本文在第二部分列举了一些当前论证死刑案件中可以适用排除合理怀疑证明标准的理论,并说明这些理论是否能证明死刑案件的定罪阶段和量刑阶均应适用更高证明标准。但因为死刑案件仍相对较少,所以误判死刑案件对正当性造成的整体损害小于每年误判数以千计的非死刑案件造成的损害:2002年仅有159人被判处死刑,但2000年有近925 000名成年人在州法院被判处重罪,其中45 000人在审判中被定罪(其余为自己认罪)。如果在死刑案件中要求真正的绝对确定性,那么可能会因为没有陪审团成员能真正声称自己有"绝对的确定性"而导致无人会被判处死刑。

The revelation of erroneous convictions in death penalty cases over the past few years has set off a renewed interest in reducing the possibility of such errors. Thus, commentators who are interested in raising the amount of certainty jurors have in the defendant＇s guilt in capital cases have unanimously called for a standard of proof above beyond a reasonable doubt. The second part discusses current theories that justify the use of the beyond a reasonable doubt standard in criminal cases and whether these theories can support the use of a higher standard of proof in capital cases, either at the guilt or the sentencing stage. However, because capital cases still remain relatively rare, the overall harm from erroneous capital convictions is likely to be lower than the loss in legitimacy across the thousands of noncapital cases that are tried each year： while 159 people were sentenced to death in 2002, there were almost 925,000 adults convicted of felonies in state courts in 2 000 and over 45,000 of these were convicted at a trial （the rest, of course, pled guilty）. If true absolute certainty were required in death penalty cases, then it would appear that no defendant would ever be sentenced to death, for no juror would ever be able to truly say he/she had ＂absolute certainty.＂