The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-13
A Timely Editorial
Reasonable Doubt
(kansas City Timesl


 Next to the alibi as convenient and efficient legal door of escape for the criminal comes ''the unreasona- ble doubt" There is this distinc- tion between the methods by which these two familiar avenues of free dom are opened to the bandit, the highwayman and the murderer. He must prove his laibi himself, but the reasonable doubt" is handed to him on legal silver platter, as it were. by the court in which his case is being tried. As the criminal code stands today the jurors are in- structed that they must be "con- vinced of the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt"
 A writer in the March number of Current History, Charles Frederick Carter, in contrasting Canadian law enforcement with that of the Unit ed States courts, holds this familiar instruction responsible for many of the failures to convict criminals in American courts in the race of the strongest evidence of their guilt, and he pertinently asks, why should a jury be so instructed? Con vinced beyond reasonable doubt," he points out, is pathological ab- surdity, for one convinced >has no doubts, reasonable or otherwise, yet no phraseology of American law has become so potent in protecting scoundrels from the consequences of their nlisdeeds, he asserts.
 Yet, absurd as this phrase upon verbal anaiysis, will appear, it is the most familiar one heard throughout the trial of criminal cases. It is dinned into the jury's minds by con stant iteration, not only by the at torneys for the defense, but by the prosecutors themselves, who feel themselves bound by it's utterance as to a fetish. It is one of "the time honored traditions of the law" And the judge himself sends the jurors to their room to deliberate on the case with the repeated eau tion about reasonable doubt ring ing in their ears. The psychologi- cal effect on the average jury is that the jurors begin their delibera- tions with a 12-man hunt for the reasonable doubt" Why not in- struct the jury simply and plainly that Eff from all the evidence intro duced they believe the defendant guilty, they should so find" which is, after all, the real purpose of the trial and the true aim of the ad- ministration of justice?
 Commenting on the fact that in the whole dominion of Canada, with nearly nine million population, there were only 57 murders m 1920 and 77 in 1921, this writer draws the following conclusions:
 Stated in it's simplest terms,
 the reason why Canada is .rela-
 lively free from cranes of vio-
 lence is that the law is enforced.
 In Montreal, the largest city in
 the dominion, with 800,0O0 pop
 ulation, there were eight mur-
 ders, or one murder per 100, ,0OO
 population, in 1921. In start
 ling contrast in Memphis. the
 same year the murder rate was
 56 per 100000. The obvious
 reason for this disparity is that in
 the United States there is one ex-
 ecution for each ninety murders,
 while in Canada statistics show
 that one out of every five mur-
 ders committed was cxpiated on
 the gallows and in addition one
 in seven murderers were sent to
 the penitentiary for life.
 In Canada attention is not so cen tered on the rights of the prisoner as to preclude attention to the pro- tection of society.