defendant
nounEtymology From Middle English defendaunt (“defendant in a suit; defender”), borrowed from Old French defendant, nominalisation of defendant; see above.
1
Law In civil proceedings, the party responding to the complaint; one who is sued and called upon to make satisfaction for a wrong complained of by another.
- 404(b)—including a series of domestic abuse incidents defendant perpetrated against victim, a PFA against defendant by victim, and other third-party PFAs entered against defendant to protect other women—as well as evidence from[…]2019 November 29, Daniel J. Anders, Bobby Ochoa III, Ohlbaum on the Pennsylvania Rules of Evidence, LexisNexis, →ISBN:
2
Law In criminal proceedings, the accused.
- Unintended mathwashing occurs when the algorithm is left unchecked, and, learning from historical data, amplifies social bias. The U.S. justice system uses an algorithm called COMPAS to determine a criminal's likelihood to re-offend. COMPAS has been proven by Pro Publica to predict that black defendants will have higher rates of recidivism than they actually do, while white defendants are predicted to have lower rates than they actually do.2018 January 29, Sophie Kleber, “As AI Meets the Reputation Economy, We're All Being Silently Judged”, in Harvard Business Review, Brighton, M.A.: Harvard Business Publishing, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 28 May 2023:
- Synonyms
- respondant
- Antonyms
- plaintiff, claimant, prosecutor
- Derived terms
- antidefendant, co-defendant, codefendant, multidefendant, nondefendant, prodefendant
- Related terms
- respondent
- Hypernyms
- litigant