C O M P A R AT I V E S T U D Y The US Supreme Court read this right into the US Constitution in the Winship278 case, holding the State (prosecuting authorities) to the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Quoting from Coffin v. United States279 (1895), the US Supreme Court in Winship noted: The reasonable-doubt standard plays a vital role in the American scheme of criminal procedure. It is a prime instrument for reducing the risk of convictions resting on factual errors. The standard provides concrete substance for the presumption of innocence – that bedrock “axiomatic and elementary” principle whose “enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law.”280 In the common law systems the trial judge instructs and gives guidance to the jurors throughout the trial. The judge must make it explicitly clear in these instructions that the jurors should give the benefit of the doubt to the accused. If there is any reasonable doubt from the totality of the evidence, the jury must acquit the accused. The process of instructing the jury throughout the trial and how the reasonable doubt instruction at the end of the trial is to be appreciated is cogently described by Richard Uviller: Jurors are invariably instructed by the judge – usually several times – that they have the exclusive responsibility to find the facts; they are then told at length just how they are to go about finding those facts. Addressing the raw data accumulated during the trial (actually, the evidence is hardly raw, having been refined by evidentiary and constitutional filtration), the judge will enjoin the jury to use their ordinary faculties of judgment and common sense. Jurors are told how to weigh credibility, taking into account the demeanour of witnesses on the stand, tone of voice, eye movements, body language, attitude – all the various sorts of unconscious communications that often betray the liar and confirm the account of the truthful. The jury is told that the credibility of a witness may be attacked (“impeached”) by evidence of bias, by contradiction of evidence from another source, or by inconsistency between the witness’s trial testimony and some statement on the same matter previously made by the same witness. They are instructed that the defendant (if he testifies in his own behalf) and, in some instances, co-conspirators are biased as a matter of law because of their inherent stake in the outcome. Jurors are also instructed that other witnesses may be biased in fact for any one of a number of reasons, among them a personal or professional relationship to the defendant or victim or some personal interest in the outcome. At the same time, the jurors are reminded that even a biased witness may tell the truth. In general, they are advised they may either discard the discredited portions of an impeached In re Winship, 397 US 358 (1970) (hereinafter “Winship”). Coffin v.United States, 156 U.S. 432, 453 (1895). 280 Winship, at 362-63, (emphasis added). 278 279 63