Juries NEVER Find A Criminal Defendant Innocent
We’re so used to the Law And Order version of criminal trials that most people don’t understand what the verdict in a criminal case actually means.
If on TV the judge asks: “How do you find?” and the foreperson says: “We find the defendant Not Guilty” many people believe that means that the jury thinks he didn’t do it. No, it doesn’t. Not at all.
Juries never decide if the defendant is innocent, that he’s not guilty of the crime.
Under American law a criminal jury actually only finds that the defendant is either:
(1) Proven Guilty Beyond A Reasonable Doubt
OR
(2) Not Proven Guilty Beyond A Reasonable Doubt.
Think of the gas gauge in your car.
Your tank might be Full, Mostly Full, Half Full, Almost Empty or Empty. It’s range of values. It’s analog.
But if your gas gauge worked the way a criminal jury verdict works, if it was a digital readout with only two possible answers, it would be either a green light meaning “Full”, meaning that the tank is totally full, right up there on the “F” on an old-fashioned gauge, or a red light, meaning “Not Full”, meaning that the needle on an old-fashioned gauge could be anywhere between just a little below the “F” all the way right down to the “E”.
That digital gas gauge would only read either “Full” or “Something Other Than Full.”
In the same way that this digital gas gauge would never tell you if your tank was mostly full, half full or downright empty, the digital jury verdict of Not Guilty never tells us if the jury thinks that the defendant is innocent or that he almost certainly did it or anywhere in between.
A verdict of “Not Guilty” only gives us the equivalent of the tank not being totally full. How much less than completely full it is you don’t know.
So, if the jury is convinced that the defendant is innocent, the verdict is: Not [Proven] Guilty.
If the jury thinks that the defendant probably didn’t do it, the verdict is: Not [Proven] Guilty.
If the jury has no idea if the defendant did it or not, the verdict is: Not [Proven] Guilty
If the jury thinks that the defendant probably did do it, the verdict is: Not [Proven] Guilty
If the jury thinks that the defendant almost certainly did do it, the verdict is: Not [Proven] Guilty
If the jury is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that the defendant did it then, and only then, the verdict is: [Proven] Guilty.
The legal establishment could have done a much better job than using the words “Guilty” and “Not Guilty” on verdict forms. If we want the jury to clearly understand their choices all verdict forms should instead read: “Proven Guilty” and “Not Proven Guilty” because those are the exact choices that the law actually gives a criminal jury.
So, the next time you watch Dateline or 48 Hours, Forensic Files or some other True Crime show and you start asking yourself what the jury is going to decide and wondering what you would do if you were on that jury, just remember that under the law the only two choices are: “Proven Guilty Beyond A Reasonable Doubt” and “Not Proven Guilty Beyond A Reasonable Doubt.”
There is no “He didn’t do it — He’s Innocent” choice at all.
If you think that the defendant might have done it or even that he probably did do it, understand that your verdict still must be: “Not [Proven] Guilty.”
Knowing that, you’ll find that it’s much easier for you to decide what you would have done if you had been a member of that jury.
–David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
