Quotes About Reasonable doubt

Jury instructions are so numerous and complex, it's a wonder jurors ever wade through them. And so it should come as no surprise that they can sometimes get stuck along the way. The instruction on circumstantial evidence is confusing even to lawyers. And reasonable doubt? That's the hardest, most elusive one of all.

It is one thing to know that a man is guilty, it is quite another matter to prove him so.

A reasonable doubt is nothing more than a doubt for which reasons can be given. The fact that 1 or 2 men out of 12 differ from the others does not establish that their doubts are reasonable.

The towering lie of the criminal justice system—that we can reliably determine the truth, that we can know "beyond a reasonable doubt" who is guilty and who is not—is built on this whopper of an admission: after a thousand years or so of refining the process, judges and lawyers are no more able to say what is true than a dozen knuckleheads selected at random off the street.

However good an argument in philosophy may happen to be, it is generally not good enough.

I hope that your committee will not permit doubt as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation

Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us.

Always carry with you a little reasonable doubt, should you meet someone who needs to be found innocent.

Always carry with you a little reasonable doubt, should you meet someone who needs to be found innocent.

there is nothing so dangerous as a maxim. —C. J. MAY, "Some Rules of Evidence: Reasonable Doubt in Civil and Criminal Cases" (1876)

Most courtroom movies feel it necessary to end with a clear-cut verdict. But 12 Angry Men never states whether the defendant is innocent or guilty. It is about whether the jury has a reasonable doubt about his guilt.

They may never be able to prove it.

You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.

The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.

They are "guilty," "not guilty," and "not proven," which jurors invoke when they decide the prosecution has failed to make a compelling case even when the prisoner is obviously guilty.

In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

It is not what we know, but what we can prove.

I would say that without any doubt he's the killer - the law says beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty which I - there's no question that he was the killer of President Kennedy.

Our constitutionally-based criminal justice system places a high value on protecting the innocent. Among its central tenets is the idea that it is better to let a guilty person go free than to convict someone without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Practically, every defense lawyer knows that the jury desperately wants to hear from the defendant and that the only reason not to put him on the stand is that he is soooo guilty that every answer he gives after his name will eradicate any shred of reasonable doubt.

After all, clemency is by nature outside the rule of law. When conferred upon those already convicted of crimes, it unravels the decision of citizen-jurors who found guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

oh my god, she said are you going to be reasonable about this?

By competent evidence, is meant such as the nature of the thing to be proved requires; and by satisfactory evidence, is meant that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind, beyond any reasonable doubt.