C O M P A R AT I V E S T U D Y benefit of that doubt.”375 Citing Harman with approval, the Court held that “[a] doubt, to work an acquittal, must be serious and substantial, not the mere possibility of a doubt.”376 However, the Court then distinguished the position taken in Harman as to how the jury must treat a reasonable doubt: An instruction which must reasonably be held to have given a jury the impression that if they found that such a doubt as the law recognizes existed … then they were vested with a discretion to determine whether the defendant should have the benefit of that actually existing reasonable doubt, is certainly misleading. The discretion of the jury is to be exercised in determining whether the reasonable doubt exists, if they find that such doubt does exist, then, the legal principle applicable is that they must give the defendant the benefit of the doubt; not that they may do so in their discretion.377 Harman and Rider illustrate that the term “reasonable doubt” was not treated as a novelty by the Pennsylvania Courts. It had gained some acceptance in articulating the standard of proof required to reach a guilty verdict. Giles v. Georgia (1849) In Giles v. Georgia,378 the Supreme Court of Georgia discussed the issue of a faulty jury instruction regarding the reasonable doubt standard. Giles concerned an appeal of a conviction for libel. The defendant appealed on the basis that the trial judge erred in instructing the jury on “the degree of conviction which should rest on their minds before they found the prisoner guilty.”379 The defendant specifically contested the trial judge’s statement that though “the defendant was entitled to the benefit of any doubts … they must be reasonable doubts, not a ‘may be so,’ or a ‘might be so.’”380 In addressing this issue, the Court attempted to define the reasonable doubt standard. The Court relied on several English treatises on the development of the term “reasonable doubt.” One of the treatises relied upon was Macnally’s Rules of Evidence on Pleas of the Crown, wherein he stated that “if a jury entertain a reasonable DOUBT upon the truth of the testimony of witnesses, given upon the issue, they are sworn well and truly to try, they are bound in conscience to deliver the prisoner from the charge found against him in the indictment, by giving a verdict of not guilty.”381 Macnally referred to Sir Edward Coke, who “exhort[ed] juries not to give their verdict against a prisoner, without plain, direct, and manifest proof Rider, at 625 (emphasis added). Rider, at 625. Rider, at 626 (emphasis added). 378 Giles v. Georgia, 6 Ga. 276 (1849) (hereinafter “Giles”). 379 Giles, at 284. 380 Giles, at 284 (emphasis added). 381 Macnally, p. 2 (emphasis in original). 375 376 377 93