As a criminal defense
attorney the two most important words in all of criminal law and procedure is
the words, “reasonable doubt.”
Legal scholars and
philosophers have thought long and hard in attempting to articulate what these
two words mean. What are these elusive
ethereal words in which the criminally accuse hang their life and future
upon.
I guess in the final
analysis these words can mean very little or very much to the individual
juror. Depending on the individual
juror’s character, personality, education and religious beliefs it can mean
many different things to different people.
On one hand when a juror has a strong sense of fairness, justice,
compassion, mercy, care in deliberation,
and fear of making a mistake, that individual would probably make a good juror
because the words “reasonable doubt”, would be words for the calling to perform
a scared duty. On the other hand, a juror
who is not deliberative has no understanding or appreciation for justice or
fairness, unmerciful, the words “reasonable doubt” would have no real meaning
or understanding to such a person.
Reasonable doubt in other
words is a moral certainty of correctness, of reaching a decision as to guilt
or not guilt, that is a close to what a mortal human being can render, without
violating his or her mortal consciousness.
Or stated more directly: Would
you convict if these same set of facts were charged against you or someone you
loved. Would you want a jury to honor
the reasonable doubt standard and acquit or would it not matter.
Very few people know that
the origins of reasonable doubt go back many hundreds of years in history, back
to the middle ages, in the time of western Christendom, when it was a mortal sin
for Christians to convict someone who was innocent. Therefore, it was mortal, or in other words, not
a sin to convict someone, as long as there was any doubt in the juror’s mind
which was reasonable. In other words, as
long as they had reasonable doubt they were prohibiting from rendering a guilty
verdict without the penalty of mortal sin.
Therefore, the origins of
the rule were to protect the juror from eternal damnation and not the accused. In
other words reasonable doubt is similar to ones conscience. Jimmy Cricket, “let your conscience be your
guide.”
Today the guilt of condemning
someone is shifted like a game between the jury and the judge. The judge says, my hands are tied, a must
accept the jurors verdict, I didn’t convict him the jury did. I have no moral responsibility to this young
man. On the other hand the game shifts to the jury
which believes, I will not punish him, the judge will. I have no mortal responsibility to this young
man, I am not punishing him, I didn’t even know or could find out what his
punishment was, I have no moral responsibility. As the classical Romans pronounced. It is the law that kills
him, not you. “Lex eum occidit, non tu.”
Or consider another analogy in thinking about this concept.
The American system to a firing squad. Firing squad procedure is well
known: One member of the squad is chosen to receive a blank, but no member of
the squad is permitted to know precisely which of them the one who is firing
the blank is. The purpose of this procedure is easy to discern: It is intended
to relieve the individual squad members of a burdensome sense of moral responsibility,
by allowing each one to doubt that it was he who fired the fatal shot. It
offers, as we might say, a kind of moral safe harbor for the conscience of
killing another human being.
No juror in a criminal
jury trial is carrying blanks. Each vote
count, and each vote must be decided with moral certainty, anything else is
a charade. Your vote, remains with you
forever.
Quote of the Day:
Ralph Waldo Emerson. “God offers to every mind its choice between
truth and repose.” Those who choose
repose receive release from the mandates of truth; but it is only temporary. No
man or woman can reject truth forever.
Those who choose truth, on the other hand, have no rest—and so they continue to fight
for justice.
January 22, 2015
Law Office of Vincent J.
Sanzone, Jr.
P.O.
Box 261
277
North Broad Street
Elizabeth, N.J. 07207
(908) 354-7006
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