RB 54

79 confessional imprisonment, the accused had to be charged with a severe crime and deny having committed the crime, and there had to be a danger of perjury (PS 17: 32). As for other than serious crimes punishable by death, a half proof, reputation or binding circumstances against the accused led to the taking of a purgatory oath; this was not allowed in cases of serious crime. Adifferent amount of proof corresponded to each of the decision categories. The Law of 1734 divided proof into three categories according to its worth: there was full proof, more than a half proof, and half proof, roughly corresponding to probatio plena, probatio semiplena major, and probatio semiplena in the ius commune doctrine. Conviction was tied to the requirement of full proof (accompanied by circumstantial evidence supporting confession in capital crimes), absolutio ab instantia to “more than a half proof,” and conditional acquittal to a half proof.Whennot enough binding circumstances or a reputation existed to warrant even a conditional acquittal (PS 17:30), then a complete acquittal had to be granted. In other than serious crimes, a purgatory oath led to a complete acquittal as well. If there was less than half proof, the court could thus release the accused, stating that he or she “could not be convicted” (a conditional acquittal). The practical outcome of the decision was the same as if the accused had been completely acquitted; however, the accused was not completely purged of the suspicion. The difference from the absolutio ab instantia was that the case could not be taken up for reconsideration. The structure of Swedish-Finnish criminal procedure did not essentially differ fromthe way the continental procedure was structured.When comparing, for Instance, the French ancien regime categories of decision (see Chs. 3 and 5) to those still used in nineteenth-century Finland, one observes apparent similarities. Although the systems were not identical, it is clear that both involved ways of getting around the “short-comings” of the statutory theory of proof. Functionally, then, plus amplement informe indéfini corresponds to absolutio ab instantia (“leaving to the future”) and hors de cour to conditional acquittal. Into Swedish law, absolutio ab instantia was adopted from Germany.*-- As stated in the previous chapter, no direct equivalent of judicial torture is found, however, in the Swedish-Finnish range of permitted outcomes. As such, the statutory rules of proof offered the judiciary little guidance. What kind of evidence did the categories of full, half, and more than half a PS 17:30 seems to allow conditional acquittal to be used even when there is less than half a proof at hand as long as binding evidence is brought against the accused. According to Wrede’s (twentienth-centurv) interpretation, this type of evidence, unlike witness evidence, simply could not be calculated, and was, therefore, a matter of the judge’s free evaluation. Wrede 1910 p. 154. Confessional imprisonment was .available in serious crimes only. Inger 197('')(b)p. 15.

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