C O M P A R AT I V E S T U D Y buy your new home, what college you’re going to send your son to. These-this is the type of decision--this is the type of decision that is embodied in the concept of reasonable doubt. So when you go through the evidence in this case, when you evaluate it and sift through it, when you come to the point of making a decision, I want you to think of it as the type of decision like the examples that I just gave you.527  The United Kingdom (England and Wales) The United Kingdom’s (“UK”) judiciary has repeatedly tried to define reasonable doubt, but to date, the higher courts have just as often found these definitions to be incorrect. While the higher courts suggest that judges should generally abstain from providing juries with a definition, the following cases still give an impression of the ways in which the reasonable doubt standard cannot or should not be defined. In Regina v. Summers (1952), the UK Court of Criminal Appeal held that it is advisable not to instruct the jury on the definition of reasonable doubt since the explanation results in more confusion.528 In Summers, the appellant appealed his conviction and sentence for theft by the Surrey Court of Quarter Sessions (a local criminal court in England and Wales).529 Although the Court of Criminal Appeal found no grounds for interfering with either the conviction or sentence and dismissed the appeal, Lord Chief Justice Goddard made some observations on the use of the expression “reasonable doubt.”530 While summing up the evidence at the end of the trial, the presiding judge stated: We have used the words “reasonable doubt.” Some people have difficulty in understanding that. I feel sure you will not have any difficulty in understanding it. If you come to the conclusion on the evidence when you are dealing with these conversations: “This might have happened, or it might not,” that is a reasonable doubt. I do not want you to bring yourself into that frame of mind if your real view is: “It is just barely possible.” … Look at it from the point of view of ordinary people, as if you were considering something in your ordinary lives. Would you, as ordinary people, if this had been something you had been told about by friends of yours, be inclined to believe them or disbelieve them? That is the sort of thing which is meant by “reasonable doubt.” It is nothing to do with lawyers’ jargon; it is merely the sort of judgement which the ordinary man of the world brings to bear on his own affairs, and look at it from that point of view.531 Matthew Bender Inc.2001, Criminal Law Advocacy, summation in Commonwealth v. Hammen by defence lawyer Richard DiMaio, available at: http://www.claraweb.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/ Reasonable-Doubt-NC-2002.htm (last accessed 14 November 2016). 528 Regina v. Summers, [1952] 1 All E.R. 1059 (hereinafter “Summers”). 529 Summers, at 1059. 530 Summers, at 1059. 531 Summers, 1059-60. 527 117