C O M P A R AT I V E S T U D Y The US Supreme Court regarded with favour the trial judge’s reference to weighty and important concerns in the jurors’ lives: [A]n illustration like the one given in this case … would be likely to aid them to a right conclusion, when an attempted definition might fail.415 By this statement, the US Supreme Court generally approved of the use of analogies when instructing juries on the meaning of reasonable doubt. Shealy argues that instead of leaving the discretion of whether or not to define the term “reasonable doubt” to the trial judges, the US Supreme Court should have embraced the Webster definition more firmly. By doing so, the US Supreme Court might have “spared the confusion that currently reigns in this area of the law.”416 Holland v. United States (1954) In Holland v. United States, the US Supreme Court approved of a jury instruction describing reasonable doubt as “the kind of doubt … which you folks in the more serious and important affairs of your own lives might be willing to act upon.”417 This description reinforced the use of analogies to describe reasonable doubt.418 The US Supreme Court also approved of the statement in Miles that “[a] ttempts to explain the term ‘reasonable doubt’ do not usually result in making it any clearer to the minds of the jury.”419 While the Court noted that the jury instruction should have been phrased in terms of “hesitate to act” rather than “willing to act upon,” it believed that “the instruction as given was not of the type that could mislead the jury into finding no reasonable doubt when in fact there was some.”420 In re Winship (1970) The year 1970 was a watershed moment for the reasonable doubt standard. The US Supreme Court in Winship granted constitutional status to the reasonable doubt standard. Winship dealt with the question of “whether proof beyond a reasonable doubt is among the ‘essentials of due process and fair treatment’ required during the adjudicatory stage when a juvenile is charged with an act which would constitute a crime if committed by an adult.”421 The Court put forward two reasons to support its holding. First, the Court reasoned that the reasonable doubt standard “is a prime instrument for reducing the risk of convictions resting on factual error” since “[it] provides Hopt, at 441. Shealy, p. 235. 417 Holland v. United States, 348 US 121, 140 (1954) (hereinafter “Holland”). 418 Power, p. 57. 419 Holland, at 140, citing Miles, at 312. 420 Holland, at 140. 421 Winship, at 359. 415 416 99