Blackstone's ratio

In criminal law, Blackstone's ratio (more recently referred to sometimes as Blackstone's formulation) is the idea that:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

as expressed by the English jurist William Blackstone in his seminal work Commentaries on the Laws of England, published in the 1760s.

The idea subsequently became a staple of legal thinking in jurisdictions with legal systems derived from English criminal law and continues to be a topic of debate. There is also a long pre-history of similar sentiments going back centuries in a variety of legal traditions.

In the United States, high courts in individual states continue to adopt specific numerical values for the ratio, often not 10:1. As of 2018, courts in 38 states had adopted such a position.