What is Reasonable Doubt?

If you ask somebody: “What is reasonable doubt?” the answer will probably be a puzzled silence or a nervous titter. Both reactions are understandable. Reasonable doubt (hereinafter also RD) is a concept we repeatedly use without being able, however, to exactly define it. For this reason the above said question is often deemed as a rhetoric question, an obvious truth or an emphatic phrase. One of the reasons why Reasonable doubt is so hard to be described, is that our beliefs about it are conflicting: sometimes we think it can be easily recognized, sometimes we deem it as unattainable. For instance, when using the idea of Reasonable doubt in the every-day life, i.e. when we agree with somebody’s opinion (and we say “there is no doubt,” “it is undoubted,” “I have no doubt”) the matter seems to be simple. However, if we meditate about such matter, it becomes increasingly more complicated. It should be good if we were able to definitely single out everything which was ever thought about Reasonable doubt, discovering, at the end, nothing else than Reasonable doubt about Reasonable doubt. Good, but practically impossible. The purpose and the aim of this research is much more simple. Among all the opinions we can have about reasonable doubt, one at least should be believed: reasonable doubt is important. I will try to formulate a set of hypotheses in order to convince readers that reasonable doubt has primary importance not only in the trial field, during the process of building and expressing judge’s final decision, but also in the less critical steps of the proceedings and trial experience. My investigation is therefore based on a first hypothesis: it is possible that reasonable doubt affects not only the final decisional step of the trial, but also the whole proceedings and trial development, because of its epistemic significance.