"The Blackstone Ratio, Modified"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper auhtored by Murat Mungan now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

In his discussion of evidentiary policies, Blackstone famously noted that "it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" (Blackstone 1769). The conventional wisdom among lawyers, judges as well as academics holds that accepting this statement as a maxim necessitates the adoption of pro-defendant evidentiary rules. It is also commonly believed that costs associated with false convictions being greater than failures to punish offenders due to the presence of punishment costs provides a utilitarian rationale for Blackstonian principles. After formalizing Blackstonian ratios (either as marginal rates of substitution or, alternatively, as the ratio between quantities of errors), I show these conventional views are incorrect. I then consider a simple modification of the Blackstone ratio which would make it more consistent with commonly held views about its implications and justifications.

Trigger warning for lawyers: there is a lot of math in this short paper.