Monday, March 30, 2009

Jury Duty

I meant to post this a couple weeks ago... but I forgot... so here it is.....

Greetings blogosphere. It’s been a while. Today I provide you with a two part blog; a commentary and a question.

Commentary on Jury Duty

It may be my civic duty, but it sucks!

And now a Question…

Is “reasonable doubt” quantifiable?

In a criminal case it is the duty of the state to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the defendant is guilty of the crime of which he/she is accused. It’s not necessary to prove beyond all possible doubt, just all reasonable doubt. Which begs the question, what is reasonable doubt? According to juror instructions it is not enough to find a person guilty if you feel that they are “probably guilty.” So reasonable doubt falls somewhere between probable guilt and definite guilt.

Let’s say for instance you are 60% certain that Defendant A is guilty. This means you have 40% doubt. So then what is the threshold that you consider to be reasonable? If you think that 20% doubt is reasonable, then you must find Defendant A innocent even though you feel it is more likely that he is guilty, than not. If, however, your threshold is 45% then you would find Defendant A guilty.

So my question dear reader is, what do you consider reasonable doubt?