Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt between evidence and theories, and you are particularly careful when a prosecutor, and I have no quarrel with this, who has the mind-set that the defendants are guilty, and then roams through 20,000 pages of transcript pointing out every quotation, every word he could generate to hook into that theory that the defendants are guilty. You actually should go through the transcript with an opposite mind; that the defendants are innocent, and so when they can weave skillfully and laboriously over seven days of patchwork a quilt of guilt by picking and plucking and choosing and selecting and omitting and overlooking everything to hook into a theory of guilt, you have to be careful because that is precisely what you shouldn’t do. You should be doing just the opposite. The presumption of innocence has a very practical effect also aside from that. The presumption of innocence places the burden of proving this case upon one side, and the court will tell you reading directly from the instructions that you will get in writing as well as orally from the court, this presumption, referring to the presumption of innocence, places upon the State, the prosecution, the burden of proving him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, it is the presumption of innocence that says the prosecution and only the prosecution has the burden because the defence need not prove innocence. That is presumed in law, and if you shift that burden onto the defence for any reason and require the defence to prove something in this courtroom, you are in violation of that commandment and your oath. Time and again it’s been my experience when the prosecution is short on evidence when the prosecution doesn’t have a case, the prosecution will perform the old trick of turning the tables and will say to you rhetorically in argument, ‘’Why haven’t the defendants proven that?’’ They will ask questions when they don’t have evidence. ‘’Where is the raincoat? Where is Little Bear?’’ They will point to the opening which the court has told you time and again is not evidence of anything in this case and they will say, ‘’Where is that evidence?’’ That is done when the prosecution doesn’t have the evidence and they would like to somehow shift the burden, but you have to be mindful that is precisely what is happening and you have to guard against it … be mindful of the fact that what the prosecution is saying to you, in effect, is I don’t have a case. I want you to look at the defendants’ failure to prove innocence. But that is not what you are to do that is precisely what you are not to do … So the presumption of innocence is the first commandment of the courtroom, and it carries with it necessarily the rules on the burden of proof and who has the burden. The second commandment is that no one could have their liberty taken from them in this country unless the prosecution offers proof, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, that presumption that the defendants are innocent, which you must keep in your mind, is a presumption that can only be overcome if there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that overwhelms the presumption. This, too, calls upon you to break with the ordinary 114

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