Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt By the XVI century, the distinction between jurors and witnesses became clear. In the mid-sixteenth century, legislation provided for means to compel witnesses to testify and made them liable in case of perjury.102 Witnesses became more important and discussions of witness credibility and the evaluation process entered the legal literature and continued throughout the next centuries. Jurors gradually became “third parties who now had to evaluate and analyze facts and events they had not personally witnessed or previously known….”103 In the late XVI and XVII centuries, the Tudor and Stuart monarchies used disciplinary measures, such as fines and imprisonment until payment, for criminal juries that refused to enter guilty verdicts in prosecutions related to religious and political sedition.104 By 1516, and for the next century and a quarter, criminal trial juries were subjected to punishment by the Star Chamber,105 and fines and imprisonment were imposed by the judges of the English Courts of Common Law.106 The turning point in the status of juries occurred in the mid-seventeenth century and was related to the prosecution of Quakers (members of a Protestant religious movement, known among other things for their pacifism.)107 After the Stuart Revolution in 1660, the Conventicles Act of 1664108 prohibited gatherings that might foster political or religious sedition, providing imprisonment, fines, or transportation109 as Shapiro, Doubt, p. 6. Shapiro, Doubt, p. 6. 104 Whitman, p. 162. 105 When first introduced in the fourteenth century, the Star Chamber was the King’s Council, which met to deal with State affairs and petitions of justice. After 1540, a smaller body named the Privy Council split from the Star Chamber, becoming a secret meeting in which to discuss government policy and administration, while the Star Chamber’s formal jurisdiction extended to civil and criminal matters, such as riots, unlawful assembly, perjury, and forgery. In the seventeenth century, during the Stuart era, the criminal jurisdiction of the Star Chamber increased because the law officers of the Crown began to use the Star Chamber to bring prosecutions. The advantage to the prosecution was that cases were tried summarily without the jury. Such trials were convenient for the prosecution of cases related to rebellions and other offenses undermining the authority of the State, where there were risks that the jury might not cooperate. Also, the Star Chamber disciplined juries that refused to enter convictions. The Star Chamber gained an infamous reputation because of its humiliating punishments and irregular methods of examination and procedure. It was abolished by the British Parliament in 1641. See Baker, p. 118-119. See also Edward P. Cheyney, The Court of Star Chamber, 18 Am. Hist. Rev. 727-50 (1913), providing a detailed history of the Star Chamber and explaining how it became a synonym for secrecy, severity, and injustice. 106 There were three English Courts of Common Law: the Court of Common Pleas (dealing with civil matters), the Exchequer (dealing with money and administrative matters) and the King’s Bench (criminal jurisdiction). In the fifteenth century, the Court of Chancery was established, with jurisdiction over matters of equity, including trusts, land law, and the administration of certain kinds of estates. See Jim Corkery, The English Courts and the Rise of Equity, 7(2) Nat’l Legal Eagle Art. 6, (2001), available at http://epublications.bond.edu.au/nle/vol7/iss2/6 (last accessed 14 April 2016). 107 Whitman, p. 173, citing Green, p. 200-264. 108 Whitman, p. 173, citing Stat. 16 Chas. 2, c.4 (1664), online version available at http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol5/pp648-651 (last accessed 14 April 2016). The Conventicles Act was an act of the Parliament of England titled “An Act to prevent and suppress Seditious Conventicles.” The Act imposed a fine on any person who attended a conventicle (any religious assembly other than the Church of England) of five shillings for the first offence and ten shillings for a second offence. Any preacher or person who allowed their house to be used as a meeting house for such an assembly could be fined 20 shillings and 40 shillings for a second offence. 109 The term “transportation” refers to being exiled. 102 103 32