Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt Unfortunately, this phase did not last long. In fact, in the year 1808, at the time of Napoleon, the Code d’instruction criminelle (Code of Criminal Procedure) entered into force in France, giving birth to a form of proceedings, the so called “mixed proceedings” that some legal scholars consider a sort of juridical monster. It resulted from the combination of the accusatorial and the adversarial system. The criminal proceeding was characterized by two distinct phases: the first one predominantly inquisitorial, written, secret, dominated by the prosecution, without participation of the accused and conducted before a judge; and the second one, basically oral and adversarial, due to the presence of both the prosecution and the defence, but destined to become a mere repetition of the investigative stage. The critical point of the entire system was the investigating judge, who not only did adjudicate the case but was conducting the investigation aimed at finding evidence, which compromised the independence of his judgment. However, some jurists of that time believed that the new form of procedure did not rule out the principle of in dubio pro reo and the reference of the principle of presumption of innocence, since the judge had to look for both incriminatory and exculpatory evidence. Assigning this dual task to the judge was aimed at finding balance between the two extremes – the protection/defence of the state versus the freedom of the individual; however, due to the renewed authoritarianism of the political regime, the balance ended inexorably tipped in favour of the state. Furthermore the system was such that, while the prosecution had to present full evidence to get the conviction, the defence had only to demonstrate that the guilt of the defendant was not fully proven so as to obtain the acquittal; as a consequence, the institute of provisional acquittal could no longer be sustainable, showing that the principle of in dubio pro reo, although weakened by the double role of the investigative judge, was still in application in the period which followed the French revolution. This understanding, although present to a certain extent in the legal theory and practice in some parts of the Continent, was not a part of a law. In his commentary to the LCP of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (hereinafter: SFRY), therefore, lawyer Branko Petric243 has stated the following: Without any hesitation, or doubt, one can with certainty claim that our law does not acknowledge that so-called “principle”, and likewise it cannot be deducted from any legal provision. (…) The evaluation of the evidence is a complicated process, which in any case must move in the area of the real, actual world and changes in it, and not in unreal combinations, regarding what is more favourable and for Branko Petric, Commentary of the Law on Criminal Procedure 1986, 2-nd edition, Official Gazette of the SFRY 26/86, Belgrade, Article 2, (quotation taken from available translation of the Commentary in English language). 243 50