201 into desuetude, vestiges of the legal theory of proof existed almost until the statutory introduction of free evaluation of evidence in 1948. When and how did the intermediate types of decision disappear? We know that the most significant of them, confessional imprisonment, was employed the last time in Finland in 1873, and that the last confessional prisoners were set free in 1880.^ Since the legal theory of proof relied essentially on confessional imprisonment, it is, thus, logical that the decisive breakthrough of free evaluation should have taken place at least by the 1870s, as I have shown above on the basis of empirical material. After the 1860s, only isolated cases of absolutio ab instantia figure in our material. Furthermore, we knowthat the institutionwas not abolished by statute until 1948. Although detailed court statistics were issued in Finland from 1890, absolutio ab instantia does not figure in themas a separate category; this seems to support the conclusion that absolutio ab instantia was rarely used. The third intermediate category, conditional acquittal, survived longest. The court statistics issued reveal that conditional acquittal was, at the turn of the century, in relation to the other possible ways of ending a criminal case employed as follows:^ T.iblc B. Conditionally acquitted, % Accusation waived, % Acquitted, % Convicted Year 1893 19.6 3.3 24.7 52.4 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 19.4 3.1 27.7. 49.8 18.1 3.1 27.8 51.0 3.2 25.1 55.0 16.7 2.9 23.8 15.6 57.7 13.7 2.8 22.1 61.4 13.9 2.8 22.2 22.3 61.1 13.4 2.4 61.9 1901 13.7 2.7 22.7 60.9 1902 13.9 2.7 21.9 61.5 Conditional acquittal was, thus, rarely used in the 1890s and 1900s; nevertheless, it appears by the statistics that the institution persisted in use until its statutory derogation in 1948.*° Why did conditional acquittal survive? The reason for its persistance in legal practice lies, it seems, in the harmfulness of « Inger 1976 (b) p. 191. Bidrag till Finlands officiella statistik 1902 pp. 47—18. Conditional acquittal is not, in all the yearly statistics, organized into a separate category. In fact, its use appears even to have been on a slight decline at the turn of the century. In 1931, however, conditional acquittal was employed in 5.5% of all criminal cases. Suomen virallinen tilasto 1931 pp. 43, 44.
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