Instructing Jurors on Reasonable Doubt: It’s All Relative

The Constitution protects us from criminal conviction unless the government can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.  However, this high burden is only as formidable as the words used to describe it to the jury.  And many courts describe it in ways that lower, and sometimes even shift, the burden of proof.

This Article identifies four common jury-instruction flaws—the important-affairs-of-life analogy, the alternative-hypothesis test, the unreasonable-doubts warning, and the search-for-the-truth mandate—and then explains, both logically and empirically, how each one violates our due process rights.