Bevisvärdering i brottmål

Sammanfattning: In Sweden, the evaluation of evidence is free. This means that the court is free to take into account all that has occurred in the proceedings, and with a few exceptions, the judges are not bound by any legal rules regarding how the evidence is to be valued. This is regulated in rättegångsbalken, chapter 35, and really the only instruction the judge receives for this task is that the evaluation shall be "conscientious". What does this mean? Is the court free to decide the effects of the evidence as they see fit, who to rely on and ultimately how the outcome of a trial will be? Evidence evaluation is actually an epistemology-based practice, and in this sense, this activity is not judicial in strict terms. It is about drawing conclusions on things that are not known, based on certain known facts, and, by these conclusions, determine the probabilities that certain events have taken place in a certain way. The conclusions that the court makes when they value evidence often have many parallels in other scientific disciplines, and there are often empirical knowledge and tools to assist in such practices that have been pursued with scientific methods in these other disciplines, which would make the courts assessments more robust than if only the judges intuition and reason guide them in these often difficult considerations. To what extent is such sciences applied by our courts? What methods are used to ensure the outcome is as consistent with the truth as possible? How do we avoid that the judges' subjective beliefs about the world lead them astray?