Court Opinion

ID: 9476069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:46:57.283156+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:06.910160
License: Public Domain

GOLDBERG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Adhering to the views expressed in my dissent to the panel opinion, I respectfully dissent to the denial of rehearing. I write only to urge that we acknowledge our substitution of the civil choice of inferences standard, see United States v. Bell, 678 F.2d 547, 549 (5th Cir. Unit B 1982) (en banc) (“A jury is free to choose among reasonable constructions of the evidence.”); Boeing Co. v. Shipman, 411 F.2d 365 (5th Cir.1965) (en banc), for the historical criminal reasonable doubt standard, see, e.g., State v. Jefferson, 10 So. 199, 200 (La. 1891) (“It is not sufficient [for a jury to] believe [a prisoner’s] guilt only probable. In fact, no degree of probability merely will authorize a conviction; but the evidence must be of such a character and tendency as to produce a moral certainty of the prisoner’s guilt to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt.”). Because the reasonable doubt standard has been vitiated beyond recognition, we should openly admit that proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every element of the crime no longer is “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”
Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 58 S.Ct. 149, 152, 82 L.Ed. 288 (1937). We should not profess that we are applying the reasonable doubt standard when we are not.