Criminal Law. Trial. Statute Permitting Conviction of Misdemeanor by Nonunanimous Court Is Consistent with Reasonable Doubt Standard. People v. DeCillis (N. Y. 1964)

1964 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 460 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Reasonable Doubt

The Presumption of Guilt and the English Law of Theft, 1750–1850

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce P. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
Legal Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Presumption Of Innocence ◽  
Golden Thread ◽  
Criminal Charge ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Over Time

When it is said that a defendant to a criminal charge is presumed to be innocent, what is really meant is that the burden of proving his guilt is upon the prosecution. This golden thread…runs through the web of the English criminal law. Unhappily Parliament regards the principle with indifference—one might almost say with contempt. The statute book contains many offences in which the burden of proving his innocence is cast on the accused.No principle in Anglo-American criminal law is more vaunted than the so-called “presumption of innocence”: the doctrine that the prosecution must bothproduceevidence of guilt andpersuadethe fact-finder “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The claim that “every man is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty” has been described as “dear to the hearts of Englishmen” and as an omnipresent feature of English criminal law. In 1895, the United States Supreme Court declared the “presumption of innocence in favor of the accused” to be “the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary”—a protection that “lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.” Befitting its lofty stature in Anglo-American legal culture, the presumption has become associated, over time, with that most famous of Blackstonean maxims: “[I]t is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”

Traffic Radar

1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald C. Thorn
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Speed Limit ◽  
Property Damage ◽  
Local Police ◽  
Professional Opinion ◽  
School Zones

Let us begin by making it clear that we are very strong advocates of the use of radar by police in speed limit enforcement. Without this particularly useful tool, it would be much more difficult to enforce some very important limits such as those associated with school zones. At the request of a local police force we have testified at a legislative hearing in opposition to a proposed law that would have limited the use of radar by police. However, we have also been involved in court situations in which we were prepared to state a professional opinion that the radar unit had been misused and that the speed reported on the citation was quite possibly inaccurate. In the bulk of this practice we see actual or possible litigation to resolve questions of responsibility for injury and/or property damage - that is, civil law. When we become involved in traffic radar questions we must remind ourselves that we are looking at criminal law and the rule is now one of reasonable doubt. Thus,

scholarly journals Rethinking the relationship between reverse burdens and the presumption of innocence

2021 ◽  
pp. 136571272110022
Author(s):  
Jackson Allen
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Presumption Of Innocence ◽  
General Norm ◽  
The Relationship

Criminal lawyers regard burdens of proof placed on the accused with deep suspicion. Recently, this suspicion has spurred an interest in how to reconcile these so-called ‘reverse burdens’ with the rule that it is for the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial. Though views on this differ among commentators, all reach their conclusions by reference to the presumption of innocence (PoI). Unfortunately, such analysis frequently falls prey to a serious error. Namely, the existing literature fails to adequately distinguish the thin conception of the PoI (a trial rule) from a thick PoI (a general norm of the criminal law) or ignores the distinction entirely. In either case, failure to appreciate this distinction and attend to its consequences raises significant doubt that existing analyses of reverse burdens are sound. This article addresses this failure and offers a fresh approach to reconciling reverse burdens and the PoI.

scholarly journals Crimes Against Humanity: Directing Attacks Against A Civilian Population

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chile Eboe-Osuji
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Trial Chamber ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Classic Theory ◽  
A Charge

AbstractIn international criminal law, to sustain a charge of crimes against humanity, the Prosecution must prove, among other elements, that the perpetrator was involved in an attack directed against a civilian population. In Prosecutor v Fofana and Kondewa, the Special Court for Sierra Leone found that the Prosecution failed to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the civilian population was the 'primary object' of the attack and acquitted the accused on the counts of murder and other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity. The Appeals Chamber accepted this view. However, it reversed Trial Chamber I on the ground that the Prosecution evidence did establish that the civilian population had been the primary, as opposed to incidental, target of the attack. The author suggests that this is an error resulting from the undue jurisprudential pre-occupation with the meaning of 'primary' in relation to the notion of attack against a civilian population. Instead, the inquiry should focus on whether the civilian population was 'intentionally' targeted in the attack, notwithstanding that it may not have been the primary object of the attack. He submits that this approach would be consistent with the classic theory of mens rea in criminal law.

scholarly journals MEDICAL MALPRACTICE AS A TORT IN THE U.S., AS A CRIME IN ITALY: FACTORS, CAUSES, PATHS AND OUTCOMES

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-34
Author(s):  
ANDREA DI LANDRO
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Medical Malpractice ◽  
Criminal Responsibility ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Tort Law ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
The U.S

The aim of the paper is, firstly, to try to understand the reasons for the different approaches to medical malpractice in two legal systems taken as models: the U.S., where professional negligence is almost exclusively subject of tort law; Italy, where criminal law instruments are instead widely used. The different extent of criminal responsibility for negligence and omission seems connectable to different political and cultural models: individualistic liberalism, on the one hand, solidarist statism and communitarianism, on the other hand; in juridical terms, to the ideal contrast between the reactive State and the active State; to the different approach to the relationship between subject and body, dominical-individual versus collectivist-social; with a tendential "privatization" of the health-good, in the US model, and a "socialization" of the good-health itself, in the Italian model. Secondly, the paper tries, in a comparative perspective, to evaluate these different approaches, in terms of access to justice, paths and outcomes of the two models. The article attempts to highlight the strengths and the weaknesses of the contingent-fee system in the U.S. tort arena, and of the criminal justice system as "free legal aid" in Italy: a balanced solution should also allow victims hindered by the costs and the length of civil actions the possibility of using these latter form of protection, avoiding that criminal justice is exploited for compensatory purposes. Indeed, tort law more easily can meet compensatory claims, due to the lower probative standard required, the preponderance of evidence, rather than the beyond any reasonable doubt standard, required in criminal law. Also in terms of outcomes, the main problems arising in the two systems need to be tackled: the problem of few persons compensated, allowing a greater number of injured parties to access to justice and obtain fair compensation; the problem of symbolic criminal convictions (observed in the Italian experience), avoiding the automatic use of suspended penalties and monetary penalties as substitute of penalties weighing on professional practice and freedom, since these automatic mechanisms limit the preventive effectiveness of the criminal sanction and run the risk of creating discrimination on a census basis.

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