by Chris Bodenner
Marc DeGirolami uses the Casey Anthony fiasco to examine how the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard actually works:
In this interesting piece, Professor Larry Laudan notes that "[w]hile jurors are instructed that they must acquit the defendant unless his guilt has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, no effort is spared to discourage judges from telling jurors how to distinguish between reasonable doubts and unreasonable ones." Appellate courts have demanded intentionally, willfully vague language from judges who are faced with confused jurors, at times going so far as to say that a reasonable doubt may be a doubt for which the juror need not be able to give any reason. That means not only, says Laudan, that we might well have disparity in the standard of proof as between trials, but also that we will likely have different BARD standards used by individual jurors within the same criminal proceeding.
Marcia Clark (yes, that one) points to a better way:
In Scotland, they have three verdicts: guilty, not guilty, and not proven. It’s one way of showing that even if the jury didn’t believe the evidence amounted to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, it didn’t find the defendant innocent either. There’s a difference. And maybe that’s what today’s not-guilty verdict really meant. Not innocent. Just not proven.
The Dish 