Criminal Case

FactLogic identifies and analyzes the risk for your case.

Definition

A crime is any act done in violation of those duties that an individual owes to the public and for whose breach the offender must provide satisfaction to the public. A criminal procedure is a set of rules governing how crimes are investigated, prosecuted, adjudicated, and punished.

The maximum punishment depends upon the charge. It can be a fine, incarceration, or probation. The U.S. Sentencing Commission establishes sentencing guidelines. The guidelines subscribe a range of sentences for each class of convicted persons as determined by categories of offense, behavior, and offender characteristics. A judge, jury, or a sentencing council (consisting of three or more judges) can impose sentencing.

A fine is a pecuniary punishment imposed by lawful tribunal upon a person convicted of a crime or misdemeanor. A fine constitutes a sentence as defined in Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Aggravating and mitigating circumstances can modify presumptive or indeterminate sentences.

You can't analyze risk unless you quantify judgments. FactLogic allows you to analyze the risk at each step of the criminal procedure. FactLogic is a revolutionary method that quantifies judgments about each independent fact or independent aggravating and mitigating circumstance and combines them logically into a single probability. FactLogic analyzes a number of probabilities to provide the overall risk for your case.

This criminal case section

describes three predictions from FactLogic that analyze your risk throughout the criminal process,
provides a three-part example, one for each prediction, and
describes the criminal process by a step-by-step flow diagram.

1. How FactLogic Analyzes Your Risk

FactLogic analyzes your risk in three ways so you can make the best possible decisions:

1. Predict the Probability of Guilt. You or any individual can evaluate each fact as would a "typical" juror. FactLogic uses your quantified judgments to determine the probability of guilt. This probability is the first step in predicting the general verdict. It requires only one fact finder whereas the other steps require a focus group of at least two; the more the better.

2. Predict the General Verdict. Select a focus group to evaluate each fact as would jurors.¹ FactLogic uses the quantified judgments about each fact to determine the probability of guilt from each member. It analyzes probabilities to predict the general verdict.

3. Predict the Punishment. If there is a positive probability the predicted verdict is Guilty, and each member of the focus group evaluates the aggravating and mitigating circumstances as would a "typical" juror. FactLogic uses their judgments to determine the overall probability of aggravation. It analyzes these probabilities to predict the punishment.

To predict the punishment, FactLogic has evaluated evidence as well as the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and the requirements for the general verdict. Predicting the punishment will help you decide

whether to take the case (or indict) and, if you do,
how to negotiate,
how to select jurors (using information obtained from the focus group),
how to organize an inexpensive Internet shadow jury using www.DecisionChannel.com, and
how to conduct efficient, accurate post-trial interviews.

Each prediction is based upon the information available and the judgments of the focus group. The predicted result is a statistical result. Because it is a statistical result, it will almost never equal the actual result. Suppose that the maximum punishment is 20 years, and the predicted maximum punishment is 4.94 years. This predicted value implies a probability of 24.7% that the verdict will be Guilty. The predicted value of 4.94 years is the average from FactLogic, but in reality the punishment will be either 20 years or 0 years, depending upon whether the verdict is Guilty or Not Guilty.²

2. Three-Part Example of Risk Analysis

The following is a simple three-part example. It shows how to use FactLogic to predict the probability of guilt, the general verdict, and the punishment.

Example. Gary Jones allegedly robbed a convenience store at approximately 1:25 a.m. Sunday morning. A witness saw a car speed away at the time of the robbery; it matched the car owned by Jones. However, his girlfriend said Jones called her at the time of the robbery, and she heard his TV in the background. His fingerprints were found on the pay phone outside the convenience store. The clerk tore Jones' shirtsleeve during the robbery, and a fragment that matched Jones' shirt was found in the trunk of Jones' car. Jones purchased a new VCR and a new TV the day after the robbery. The convenience store's video camera showed a man matching Jones' description at the time of the robbery, but it was quite blurred. He had two similar convictions within the last nine years and was on probation. He took all of the store's cash (i.e., $2,067), and "pistol whipped" the 61-year-old clerk after she had given him the cash. A cousin stated that he had planned the robbery two weeks earlier.

Predict the probability of guilt.
Predict the general verdict.
Predict the punishment.

2.1 Predict the Probability of Guilt

Predicting the probability of guilt is the basic component of risk analysis. It predicts how the typical juror will decide in the general verdict.

Solution (Probability of Guilt). A fact finder was asked to state his idea of reasonable certainty (i.e., the complement of a reasonable doubt). It was 85%. He also evaluated the independent facts. The evidence and the probabilities from that fact finder are listed in Table 1. FactLogic determines the probability of guilt from this fact finder to be 91.060%. (If this fact finder were a juror, he would decide Guilty because 91.060% exceeds 85.000%.)

Table 1. Independent facts as evaluated by one fact finder to determine the probability of guilt.

#	fact	Probability Fact is True	Probability Fact Proves Guilt, Given Fact is True	Probability Fact Proves Innocence, Given Fact is True
1	A witness saw a car speed away at the time of the robbery that matched the car owned by Jones.	70	50	0
2	His girlfriend said Jones called her at the time of the robbery and she heard his TV in the background.	5	0	100
3	Jones' fingerprints were found on the pay phone outside the convenience store.	100	60	0
4	Jones purchased a new VCR and a new TV the day after the robbery.	100	7	0
5	The store's video camera showed a man matching Jones' description at the time of the robbery, but it was quite blurred.	10	70	0
6	The clerk tore Jones' shirtsleeve and the fragment matched Jones' shirt that was found in the trunk of Jones' car.	100	80	0

2.2 Predict the General Verdict

Predicting the general verdict is the most complex and the most important component of risk analysis. It requires a focus group. If the goal is to evaluate the evidence accurately, members of the focus group should evaluate the evidence independently (i.e., without communication). However, if the goal is to evaluate the evidence as jurors do, members of the focus group should evaluate the evidence with communication. The risk of communicating is that a member of the focus group might be persuasive in a way that is different from the way a juror might be persuasive.

Solution (General Verdict) The seven members of a focus group stated their ideas of a reasonable certainty and evaluated the evidence as in Table 1. FactLogic determined the probabilities of guilt. The pairs of reasonable certainty and probability of guilt from the seven members are: (85%, 88.687%), (90%, 98.519%), (85%, 82.013%), (95%, 96.902%), (90%, 89.443%), (95%, 93.402%), and (80%, 88.045%). FactLogic predicted that there is a probability of 24.7% that the verdict will be Guilty.

2.3 Predict the Punishment

Solution (Punishment). ). From Section 2.2, above, the probability that the verdict will be Guilty is 24.7%. The maximum punishment is mitigated by aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Either an individual or a focus group can evaluate the aggravating and mitigating circumstances. The circumstances and the average probabilities of aggravation from the seven focus group members are listed in Table 2. The overall probability of aggravation is 88.993%. The maximum punishment for this crime is 20 years. Therefore, the predicted punishment is

20 years x 0.247 x 0.88993 = 4.40 years.

Table 2. Independent aggravating and mitigating circumstances and average probabilities provided by
a focus group to determine the probability of aggravation .

#	Circumstance	Probability Circumstance is True	Percentage of Aggravation, Given Circumstance is True	Percentage of Mitigation, Given Circumstance is True
1	Gary Jones "pistol whipped" the 61 year old clerk.	91.515	82.667	0
2	Gary Jones planned the robbery two weeks earlier.	63.104	9.479	0
3	Gary Jones had two similar convictions in the last nine years and was on probation at the time of the robbery.	100	51.759	0

3. Criminal Procedure

For a list of explanations that refer to the numbers used in this chart, click here.
To allow simultaneous viewing of the chart and explanations, adjust the size of the window that will open after clicking on the link.

Summary

FactLogic allows you to analyze the risk of your case in three ways:

Predict the Probability of Guilt. It allows you to predict guilt from the judgments of one or more fact finders. facts are evaluated.
Predict the Verdict. It allows you to predict the general verdict from the judgments from a focus group and the requirements of the verdict. facts are evaluated.
Predict the Punishment. It allows you to predict the punishment from the judgments of a focus group. Aggravating and mitigating circumstances are evaluated. The predicted punishment results from the maximum punishment, the probability of a Guilty verdict, and the probability of aggravation.

Footnotes

¹The focus group can be selected as you choose, including selecting from the pool of registered users of FactLogic on our Web site, www.DecisionChannel.com.

²If this case were tried 1,000 times before 1,000 random juries, 247 verdicts would be Guilty (and the punishment would be 20 years) and 753 verdicts would be Not Guilty (and the punishment would be 0 years). The average punishment would be 4.94 years.