Opinion ID: 2566966
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Turning Away From Obviate all Reasonable Doubt

Text: ¶ 24 Against this backdrop, we turn to the instruction to which Mr. Reyes takes exception. The court of appeals felt constrained to reject the beyond a reasonable doubt instruction used in Mr. Reyes's trial because they failed to satisfy the Robertson requirements that the State must obviate all reasonable doubt and that it must avoid use of the phrase reasonable doubt cannot merely be a possibility. Reyes, 2004 UT App 8 at ¶¶ 19, 22, 84 P.3d 841. The court of appeals applied two standards of review. Id. at ¶¶ 14, 16. First, it reviewed under a nondeferential correction of error standard the question of whether the reasonable doubt jury instruction properly applied the law set out in Robertson. Id. at ¶ 14. It then assessed whether the failure to conform to the Robertson test was a structural error infringing on Mr. Reyes's guarantee of due process. Id. at ¶ 16. ¶ 25 The court of appeals found merit in Mr. Reyes's claim that the trial court erred when it failed to expressly instruct that the State's proof must obviate all reasonable doubt as mandated by Robertson. Id. at ¶ 19. The obviate all reasonable doubt test found life in Justice Stewart's dissent in State v. Ireland, 773 P.2d 1375, 1380-82 (Utah 1989) (Stewart, J., dissenting). There, Justice Stewart took issue with an instruction that equated beyond a reasonable doubt with an abiding conviction of the truth of the charge. Id. He reasoned that since the standard to be applied is beyond a reasonable doubt, it followed that any definition of the standard must reference the obstacle  reasonable doubt  to be overcome by the evidence, and must convey the principle that the State must surmount the obstacle of reasonable doubt to justify a conviction. Id. The obviate all reasonable doubt concept appears to derive from a fear that in ascertaining the conviction of the truth of a charge against a defendant, a juror might misapply the beyond a reasonable doubt standard unless she is required to search out, confront, and defeat reasonable doubt with evidence. ¶ 26 Insightful and important as Justice Stewart's image of beyond a reasonable doubt may be, his suggestion that the jury be instructed to obviate all reasonable doubt is both linguistically opaque and conceptually suspect. Not every jury will confront evidence in its deliberations sufficient to create a reasonable doubt. The notion of obviating doubt is cumbersome at best where proof is scant or lacking in credibility. In these instances, a description of beyond a reasonable doubt that asks jurors to rate the magnitude of their conviction concerning the strength of the evidence imparts a more accurate and useful concept of beyond a reasonable doubt than does a construct that requires jurors to identify doubts and assess whether the evidence overcomes them. A universal application of the notion that the State must obviate all reasonable doubt can be achieved only by tying it to the concept of the presumption of innocence. If innocence is thought of as an array of inchoate reasonable doubts that the State must overcome to attain a conviction, it follows that the State must obviate reasonable doubts in every case. We do not, however, endorse this unwieldy view of the presumption of innocence. ¶ 27 The process suggested by the obviate all reasonable doubt standard is also flawed because, contrary to its purpose, it tends to diminish the degree of proof necessary to convict and in that respect violates the Victor standard. The obviation of doubt contemplates a two-step undertaking: the identification of the doubt and a testing of the validity of the doubt against the evidence. This process suggests a back and forth disputation of a doubt's merits, all to the end of determining whether the evidence is sufficient to obviate the doubt. The beyond a reasonable doubt standard does not, however, condition a conclusion that a doubt is reasonable on an ability either to articulate the doubt or to state a reason for it. An unarticulated conviction that the State has failed to meet its burden of proof will serve as a legitimate basis to acquit. ¶ 28 To the extent that the Robertson obviate test would permit the State to argue that it need only obviate doubts that are sufficiently defined, the test works to improperly diminish the State's burden. Writing in the Notre Dame Law Review, Professor Steve Sheppard criticized the expanding prominence of the requirement that doubts be articulated. Steve Sheppard, The Metamorphoses of Reasonable Doubt: How Changes in the Burden of Proof Have Weakened the Presumption of Innocence, 78 Notre Dame L.Rev. 1165 (2003). Professor Sheppard summarized the central vice of this trend this way: A troubling conclusion that arises from the difficulties of the requirement of articulability is that it hinders the juror who has a doubt based on the belief that the totality of the evidence is insufficient. Such a doubt lacks the specificity implied in an obligation to give a reason, an obligation that appears focused on the details of the arguments. Yet this is precisely the circumstance in which the rhetoric of the law, particularly the presumption of innocence and the state burden of proof, require acquittal. Id. at 1213. ¶ 29 Central to our reconsideration of the merits of the obviate all reasonable doubt element of Robertson is our belief that the exacting demands of the beyond a reasonable doubt standard can be clearly and fairly communicated through an affirmative description of the degree of conviction that must be attained by a juror based on the evidence. We see little to be gained by including within a beyond a reasonable doubt instruction the potentially confusing concept that every defendant is entitled to a presumption of reasonable doubt, which the State's evidence must obviate. ¶ 30 Because we conclude that the obviate all reasonable doubt element of the Robertson test carries with it the substantial risk of causing a juror to find guilt based on a degree of proof below beyond a reasonable doubt, we expressly abandon it.