UCLA STUDY: Innocent Are Guilty Under Title IX’s Low Standards
Conviction in criminal trials in the USA requires establishing a defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. By contrast, in Title IX proceedings allegations of wrongdoing are adjudicated according to a much lower ‘preponderance of the evidence’ standard. This article provides a framework for using information regarding false conviction probabilities in criminal trials to model the probability of false guilty verdicts in Title IX proceedings. An innocent person facing a 4% of being found guilty under the beyond a reasonable doubt standard would face a 33% probability of being found guilty under Title IX’s preponderance of the evidence standard…when the burden of proof is preponderance of the evidence, the risks faced by innocent defendants will be substantial.
academic.oup.com A-probabilistic-framework-for-modelling-false By John Villasenor
