C O M P A R AT I V E S T U D Y FACTS PERTAINING TO THE APPLICATION OF THE STANDARD BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT IN THE ANGLO-SAXON WORLD As it has been stated before, although the reasonable doubt language appears in numerous cases from the 1780s onwards, it was not until the nineteenth century that reasonable doubt as a standard was incorporated into the US jurisprudence. Scholars observe that US states gradually accepted the reasonable doubt standard in their own time.364 Long before 1970, when the US Supreme Court held in its seminal case In re Winship365 that the reasonable doubt standard is required under the US Constitution, state courts had imposed this standard in state criminal proceedings. For example, in Robbins v. Ohio (1857), the Ohio Supreme Court quoted the trial judge’s jury instruction: In most cases of murder in the first degree, it is necessary to establish by proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, the fact of killing, the intent to kill, and the deliberate and premeditated malice...366 This instruction is quite progressive, although it is not clear from the Court’s pithy reference whether the trial judge actually defined the reasonable doubt standard. In some of the early cases (discussed below), the courts were not explicitly dealing with the definition of reasonable doubt. Rather, the courts attempted to describe reasonable doubt in the context of dealing with other issues, such as the use of circumstantial evidence, the proper application of the standard of proof, or whether the jury has the discretion to acquit when entertaining a reasonable doubt. In dealing with these issues, the courts never settled on a clear definition of the reasonable doubt standard, resulting in the confusion and inconsistency that persists to this day. In various attempts to describe or clarify the term “reasonable doubt,” the courts often used even more confusing terms, such as “moral certainty,” “satisfied conscience,” and “substantial doubt,” or attempted to explain reasonable doubt by way of analogy or through real-life examples. The courts did not always use these terms consistently. As a result, despite the judicial attention devoted to the definition of the reasonable doubt standard, it remains as unsettled and elusive today as it was when it was first introduced in the eighteenth century. After chronologically discussing the early state and US Supreme Court To trace the development of the reasonable doubt standard in different US States, see Morano, p. 52021; Shelagh Kenney, Note, Fifth Amendment Upholding the Constitutional Merit of Misleading Reasonable Doubt Jury Instructions, 85(4) J. Crim. L. & Criminology 989, 989-95 (1995) (hereinafter “Kenney”). 365 Supra n.278. 366 Robbins v. Ohio, 8 Ohio St. 131, 167-68 (1857). 364 91