Opinion ID: 1183195
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Quantification of Reasonable Doubt

Text: This assignment of error is dispositive of the Bonnette, Orfield and Hale cases. It is inapplicable to Milligan's appeal. The laws of this state, as expressed both by statute and decisions of this court, forbid any attempt by a trial judge to define the concept of reasonable doubt in any manner other than that set out by the legislature in NRS 175.211. McCullough v. State, 99 Nev. 72, 657 P.2d 1157 (1983). Likewise, any attempt to quantify the degree of proof needed to establish a reasonable doubt is impermissible. As we held in McCullough: The concept of reasonable doubt is inherently qualitative. Any attempt to quantify it may impermissibly lower the prosecutor's burden of proof, and is likely to confuse rather than clarify. 99 Nev. at 75, 657 P.2d at 1159. In the instant cases the trial judge used various examples ranging from the amount of air in a balloon to a scale of one to ten, in efforts to quantify the concept of reasonable doubt. In addition to these comments the trial judge instructed the juries in language identical to that used in McCullough, above: It is not necessary that the defendant's guilt should be established beyond a reasonable doubt or to an absolute certainty, but instead thereof that the defendant's guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt as hereinafter defined. While we have no doubt that the judge was trying to aid the jury in understanding its role, his comments require us to reverse the convictions of Bonnette, Orfield and Hale and remand them for new trials. These cases are indistinguishable from McCullough; and, therefore, we have no choice other than to reverse the convictions.