Politics Reasonable Doubt, Only Human Edition
posted by on March 5 at 8:44 AM
The back-and-forth over “reasonable doubt” continues at the Libby trial. The jury seems to want to know if they should decide Libby’s guilt based on whether it is “humanly possible” for a person to have forgotten all that Libby claims to have forgotten, or if they can decide his guilt based simply on whether they believe him or not.
The judge now wants them to clarify what they mean by “humanly possible.”
See here and here for more language parsing.
from the state of florida jury instructions:
A reasonable doubt is not a mere possible doubt, a speculative, imaginary or forced doubt. Such a doubt must not influence you to return a verdict of not guilty if you have an abiding conviction of guilt. On the other hand, if, after carefully considering, comparing and weighing all the evidence, there is not an abiding conviction of guilt, or, if, having a conviction, it is one which is not stable but one which wavers and vacillates, then the charge is not proved beyond every reasonable doubt and you must find the defendant not guilty because the doubt is reasonable.
They apparently haven't heard of jury nullification. Basically, it doesn't matter what "reasonable doubt" is. The jury can decide what they want to decide, and that's it.
All I know is I smell Traitors, and Libby is just one of them.
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