Summary
Supreme Court Review - Case Note
The U.S. Supreme Court in the consolidated cases of Victor v. Nebraska and Sandoval v. California held incorrectly that the jury instructions adequately explained the concept of reasonable doubt, even while admitting that the instructions were not completely clear. The decision represents an unwarranted narrowing of the 1990 decision in Cage v. Louisiana. The court relied on cases from the 18th and 19th centuries to establish the instructions' constitutionality, instead of considering the way they would be understood by modern jurors. The court also failed to provide clear guidance as to what an exemplary instruction would be.See the full content of this document
Extract
Fifth Amendment - upholding the constitutional merit of misleading reasonable doubt jury instructions.
I. INTRODUCTION
The United States Supreme Court denied the defendants' appeals in the consolidated cases of Victor v. Nebraska and Sandoval v. California.(1) In each case, the petitioner argued that the state trial court's reasonable doubt jury instruction suggested that a lower standard of proof was necessary for conviction than the standard required by constitutional due process. Writing for the majority, Justice O'Connor admitted that the reasonable doubt instructions contained language that was not entirely clear. However, she explained that, taken in context and viewed as a whole, the instructions adequately conveyed the concept of reasonable doubt.(2) Justice O'Connor's opinion greatly narrowed the scope of the Court's recent per curiam decision in Cage v. Louisiana,(3) the case upon which both petitioners had formulated their appeals. Justice O'Connor based her conclusion, as to the meaning of reasonable doubt and the phrases challenged by petitioners, upon a historical analysis of the reasonable doubt concept and upon eighteenth and nineteenth-century case law and texts.(4) Though expressing disapproval of the reasonable doubt instructions at issue in both Victor and in Sandoval,(5) Justice O'Connor stopped short of setting forth an exemplary jury instruction and thus failed to clear up the confusion as to what sort of instruction the Court would endorse outright. This Note begins by reviewing the concept of reasonable doubt and its historical development, both in case law and in treatises, placing special emphasis on the Court's relatively recent history of interpreting the reasonable doubt standard. Next, this Note finds fault with the Court's holding in both Sandoval and Victor, arguing that the Court has improperly narrowed the important constitutional safeguards upheld in Cage to the facts of Cage alone, leaving the states with no valuable guidance as to how to instruct on the concept of reasonable doubt. This Note also contends that the Court lowered the standard of proof necessary to convict a defendant by upholding these two convictions, even though the juries received ambiguous and misleading definitions of reasonable doubt. Finally, this Note explores the Court's motivation for such an about-face with respect to the tenets of Cage and discusses the likely ramifications of the Court's holding for the future of criminal jurisprudence. II. BACKGROUND A. REASONABLE DOUBT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires the State to prove every element of a charged criminal offense beyond a reasonable doubt.(6) The reasonable doubt standard had its first documented beginnings in the eighteenth century in England and America. There are two frequently cited theories regarding the first appearance of the concept of reasonable doubt in English and American case law. On the one hand, Judge John Wilder May, a nineteenth-century editor and author of numerous treatises, concluded that, as far as he could determine, the reasonable doubt standard was first employed in the Irish treason trials in 1798.(7) During the trial of Rex v. Finney(8) in Dublin, the defense counsel stated that it "may...be considered a rule of law, that, if the jury entertain a reasonable doubt upon the truth of the testimony of witnesses given upon the issue they are sworn well and truly to try, they are bound" to acquit.(9) Citing this case, Judge May concluded that its use in Ireland predated its use in the United States. Alternatively, Professor Morano asserted that the English and American courts employed the reasonable doubt standard even earlier in the eighteenth century.(10) As an example, Professor Morano cited the language used in the Boston Massacre Trials of 1770. Arguing for the conviction of British soldiers who had fired into a crowd of Boston residents who were protesting British military presence in the colonies, counsel for the British Crown, Robert Treat Paine, stated: [I]f therefor in the examination of this Cause the Evidence is not sufficient to Convince you beyond reasonable doubt of the Guilt of all or of any of the Prisoners by the Benignity and Reason of the Law you will acquit them, but if the Evidence be sufficient to convince you of their Guilt beyond reasonable doubt the Justice of the Law will require you to declare them Guilty and the Benignity of the Law will be satisfied in the fairness and impartiality of their Tryal.(11) B. REASONABLE DOUBT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Despite the different theories as to the source of the concept, historians agree that the reasonable doubt standard did not become a fixture of American jurisprudence until the mid-nineteenth century.(12) By then, the reasonable doubt standard had become widely accepted as the accurate description of the degree of doubt necessary for acquittal of a criminal defendant.(13) State courts gradually accepted the reasonable doubt standard, each f...See the full content of this document
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