Evidence evaluation is a complicated but important part of the courts’ work. Especially in cases where there is often a lack of technical evidence, the assess-ment is even more difficult, for example in cases of sexual offence. With the risk of guilty sex offenders going free and the innocent being punished for lack ofclear evidence, the evidence evaluation of the plaintiff’s oral statements is crucial in these cases. The Supreme Court has thus been given an important role in pre-scribing criteria that lead to higher or lower probative value of such statements.

The essay examines how the Supreme Court's criteria for evaluating plaintiffs'oral statements in cases of sexual offence relate to extrajudicial research andwhether they have changed over time.

The method can either be described as legal analysis or evidentiary. The es-sential thing is that psychological and medical research is used to analyze the law. Thus, a traditional legal dogmatic method is applied in terms of the legal parts, amethod based on literature study and systematic overview regarding the externalresearch and a legal analytical or evidentiary method in the closing chapter. A qualitative selection is made of both the legal and extra-legal material. The se-lection is based on relevance, authority and age. The difficulty of applying ex-trajudicial research to Swedish legal contexts is prevented by using research from court-like situations, research that has been adapted to these contexts and that isconnected to Sweden.

The result shows that the meaning of free examination of evidence is debated.Some research suggests that the courts' examination of evidence is completelyfree, while other research claims that the examination of evidence is only freefrom legal rules. In light of the departure from the legal theory of evidence andthe fact that it is practically necessary, it is established that custom and doctrinemust be taken into account when evaluating evidence.

Furthermore, it is made clear that the Supreme Court has set criteria that entail both higher and lower probative value. For example, a detailed statement incre-ases the probative value, while doubt in crucial parts lowers the probative value. Some criteria have changed over time, for example the constancy criterion whichis now hardly to be taken into account, while other criteria can be assumed tohave changed names. There are also criteria that have not been defined by thecourt, for example what is meant by a clear statement, which the Supreme Courtshould do.

The extrajudicial research highlights certain criteria that influence the evaluat-ion of evidence and others that do not. Suggestively, a detailed statement indica-tes that the story is self-experienced, as does displayed uncertainty. It appears that the criteria must be thoroughly investigated, for example with regard to therealism of the statement, and that consideration must be given to, among otherthings, the age and verbal ability of the person making the statement.

In conclusion, the legal criteria are compared with the external research whe-reby it appears that some criteria agree with the research, some agree partially, some find no support and others are interpreted in the opposite direction. It isstated that the change that has taken place is positive, but that it is not yet fully consistent, which is why the Supreme Court is asked to adapt its criteria accor-ding to the cited research.