In
law, a conviction is the determination by a
court of law that a
defendant
In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case.
Terminology varies from one juris ...
is
guilty of a
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...
.
A conviction may follow a guilty
plea that is accepted by the court, a
jury trial
A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial, in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions.
Jury trials are increasingly used ...
in which a
verdict of guilty is delivered, or a
trial by judge in which the defendant is found guilty.
The opposite of a conviction is an
acquittal
In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal means that the criminal prosecution has failed to prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the charge presented. It certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an of ...
(that is, "not guilty"). In
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
, there can also be a verdict of "
not proven", which is considered an acquittal. Sometimes, despite a defendant being found guilty, the court may order that the defendant not be convicted. This is known as a
discharge and is used in countries including England, Wales, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
In any
criminal justice system, innocent people are sometimes convicted.
Appeal mechanisms and
post conviction relief procedures may help to address this issue to some extent. An error leading to the conviction of an innocent person is known as a
miscarriage of justice. In some judicial systems, the prosecution may appeal acquittals; while in others, this is prohibited under
double jeopardy protections.
After a defendant is convicted, the court determines the appropriate
sentence as a
punishment
Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon an individual or group, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a deterrent to a particular action or beh ...
. In addition to the sentence, a conviction can also have other consequences, known as
collateral consequences of criminal charges. These can include impacts on employment, housing, the right to travel to other countries, and other areas of an individual's life.
A person's history of convictions is known as their
antecedents or "previous" in the United Kingdom and "priors" in the United States and Australia.
See also
*
Convict
*
Conviction rate
The conviction rate, expressed as a percentage, represents the proportion of cases resulting in a legal declaration of Guilt (law), guilt for an offense, against the total number of trials completed. It is calculated by dividing the number of con ...
*
Verdict
*
Clearance rate
References
{{Authority control
Common law legal terminology
Criminal law legal terminology
Criminal law