Reasonable Doubt Expressed In Percentage Terms

[Erik Narramore]

I am above 90% but below 99%.  I think I have listed my 10 reasons why I think he is likely guilty, but I have also said that I do not believe he should have been convicted, as there is reasonable doubt.

The way I see the percentages working is:

100% - Probably impossible to reach.  Even if somebody is caught red-handed, you do not know for sure their state of mind.  100% is a philosophically-unattainable standard.  That's why we say 'beyond reasonable doubt' rather than 'beyond doubt'.

99% - Beyond reasonable doubt/sure.  To me, this is what is meant by saying you are 'sure' about something in a realistic sense.

Anything less than 99% is normally acquittal.  The remaining 1% is residual/minor doubt that arises in virtually all cases.

98% normally must mean acquittal because as soon as you start to allow doubt to creep in to a conviction, it looks unsafe.  Yet there is probably no definite identifiable red line when a conviction actually becomes unsafe, and maybe sometimes 98% is enough to convict. But it is a slippery slope because if you accept doubt about one thing and convict anyway then why not overlook doubt about something else?  Percentages are an arbitrary representation of something that can't be reliably defined for all cases.