Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt It was the judges’ duty: [I]n charging the jury, to remind them, that as they are intrusted with the administration of public justice on the one hand, and with the life, the honour and the property of the prisoner on the other, their duty calls on them, before they pronounce a verdict of condemnation, to ask themselves whether they are satisfied, beyond the probability of doubt, that he is guilty....237 Another influential treatise, Practical Treatise on the Law of Evidence by Thomas Starkie noted: Evidence which satisfies the minds of the jury of the truth of the fact in dispute, to the entire exclusion of every reasonable doubt, constitutes full proof of the fact; absolute mathematical or metaphysical certainty is not essential...238 Starkie further explained that: To acquit upon light, trivial and fanciful suppositions and remote conjectures is a virtual violation of the juror’s oath... On the other hand, a juror ought not to condemn unless the evidence exclude from his mind all reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the accused, and … unless he be so convinced by the evidence that he would venture to act upon that conviction in matters of the highest concern and importance to his own interest.239 In Simon Greenleaf’s Treatise on the Law of Evidence, the amount of proof required in a criminal case is described as “that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind beyond reasonable doubt.”240 Finally, there is American preeminent and highly influential expert on the law of evidence, Dean John Wigmore’s famous Treatise on Evidence, stating that: In criminal cases, a rule has grown up that the persuasion must be beyond a reasonable doubt. This precise distinction seems to have had its origin no earlier than the end of the 1700s and to have been applied at first only in capital cases, and by no means is a fixed phrase but in various tentative forms. “A clear impression,” “upon clear grounds,” “satisfied,” are the earlier phrases; and then “rational doubt,” “rational and well-grounded doubt,” “beyond the probability of doubt,” and “reasonable doubt” come into use.241 Macnally, p. 3 (emphasis added). Thomas Starkie, Practical Treatise on the Law of Evidence 724 (T & J. W. Johnson & Co. 1860) (hereinafter “Starkie”) available at https://archive.org/details/cu31924020112888 (last accessed 14 April 2016) (emphasis added). 239 Starkie, p. 761. 240 Simon Greenleaf, a Treatise on the Law of Evidence, Vol. 1, § 2, at 4 (Little, Brown & Co., 13th ed., 1876) available at https://archive.org/details/cu31924020130112 (last accessed 14 April 2016) (emphasis added). 241 John Wigmore, A Treatise on the System of Evidence in trials at Common Law, § 2497 (Toronto: Canada Law Book 1905) (hereinafter “Wigmore’) (italics in original) available at https://archive.org/ details/cihm_73414 (last accessed 14 April 2016). 237 238 48