Criminal Court: Guilty by the Preponderance of the Evidence?
One of our fundamental beliefs is that before a jury may convict a person of a crime, it must be satisfied of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. However, upon even minimal scrutiny, this belief starts to crumble. For example, Wisconsin criminal jury instruction number 140 concludes with the following two sentences: “While it is your duty to give the defendant the benefit of every reasonable doubt, you are not to search for doubt. You are to search for the truth.”
This instruction is problematic for several reasons. First, it invites — in fact, instructs — the jury to disregard the evidence and instead speculate on, or “search for,” what it believes to be “the truth.” This capitalizes on the human tendency to think we can know things without evidence. How often have you heard someone say, for example, “I know it, I just can’t prove it”? The jury instruction only emboldens that kind of sloppy thinking, and at the worst possible time with much at stake.
Second, this concept of truth-seeking is actually misplaced.