Beyond reasonable doubt : About the evaluation of evidence regarding criminal law

The purpose with this paper is to examine how the Swedish courts reach the conclusion that a crime is committed beyond reasonable doubt. This is examined through an empirical study. The empirical study consists of an analysis of 60 verdicts: 30 verdicts from the District Court and 30 verdicts regarding the same cases from the Court of Appeal. In order to define de lege lata, the paper initially contains a presentation of the relevant doctrine and case law. This involves presentations of the case law about the evaluation of evidence and, more specifically, case law about the courts’ evaluation of the alleged victim’s and the suspect’s statements. The analysis is based on a formulation of questions, which all aim to answer the question about how the Swedish courts reach the conclusion that at crime is committed beyond reasonable doubt. This contains answers to what kind of evaluation method is used, how the courts reach the conclusion that a statement is true or false, what the most common reason for a conviction is, what the most common reason for a verdict of acquittal is, if the suspect’s statement is evaluated in the same way as the alleged victim’s, and how the courts identify a statement as a reconstruction. The analysis shows that the most common evaluation method is the prejudice from NJA 2015 s. 702. This evaluation method states that if the prosecutor’s evidence is enough to state that the crime is committed beyond reasonable doubt, the suspect’s statement must be evaluated in order to examine if the statement can dislodge the value of the prosecutor’s evidence. It is clear that the courts reach their verdicts in distinctively different ways. The District Court reaches the conclusion that a crime is committed beyond reasonable doubt, even though it does not evaluate the evidence can could dislodge the value of the prosecutor’s evidence. This is concerning due to the right of a fair trial and due to the rule of law. However, the Court of Appeal tend to not evaluate the evidence in favour of the suspect, since they find the suspect innocent on the basis of the prosecutor’s deficient evidence. In the few cases where the District Court reached the conclusion that the suspect’s story is a reconstruction, the main reason for this was that the statement was incoherent. By an examination of the Court of Appeal’s view on the alleged victim’s statement, it is clear that the court did not view this as a reconstruction – even though the court, in many cases, found the statement to be incoherent. Furthermore, the analysis shows that there seems to be a difference in the way the courts evaluate the witnesses’ statements depending on what type of crime that has allegedly been committed