Court Opinion

ID: 9567738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:57:16.865067+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:20:33.938490
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice
(dissenting):
I dissent because I believe that the instruction defining proof beyond a reasonable doubt was erroneous.
In defining reasonable doubt, the trial court gave the following instruction:
A reasonable doubt is one based on reason. It is not mere possible doubt, but is such a doubt as would govern or control a person in the more weighty affairs of life. If the minds of the jurors, after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence, are in such a condition that they can say they feel an abiding conviction of the truth of the charge, there is not a reasonable doubt. Doubt to be reasonable must be actual and substantial, not mere possibility or speculation.
*1381There are several problems with this instruction. First, it implies that a defendant should be convicted if there is “an abiding conviction of the truth of the charge....” That is not the law. A defendant should be convicted only if guilt is shown beyond a reasonable doubt, and the instruction should specifically state that the State’s proof must obviate all reasonable doubt. This instruction in effect states that if the jury has an abiding conviction of guilt, then it follows that it does not have a reasonable doubt. I submit that that misstates the law.
Second, it is not proper to instruct a jury that a reasonable doubt is one which “would govern or control a person in the more weighty affairs of life.” Nothing that one ordinarily does in the course of a normal life span is comparable to the decision to deprive another of either his or her life or liberty by voting to convict for a crime. See Scurry v. United States, 347 F.2d 468 (D.C.Cir.1965), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 883, 88 S.Ct. 139, 19 L.Ed.2d 179 (1967). Profound differences exist between decisions to convict another person and decisions to enter into marriage, buy a home, invest money, have a child, or have a medical operation — or whatever else might be deemed a weighty affair of life.
The mental process employed in deciding that someone has committed a crime beyond a reasonable doubt is different from the mental process employed in making decisions in the “more weighty affairs of life.” In making the latter type decision, a person looks forward and makes a decision about future conduct. A degree of risk is always inherent in such a decision, and usually the degree of risk based on doubt about future events is significant. The process employed in making such decisions is only partly a matter of assessment of past facts; instead, the decision often rests on a degree of hope, determination, and frequently, personal resolve. In most cases, the decision is revocable, but whether or not revocable, it is at least salvageable.
A decision to convict always looks backward; it is concerned only about resolving conflicting versions of factual propositions about a past event. It is always irrevocable as to the jurors. The process does not involve the decision maker’s hope, determination, or willingness to undertake a personal risk. Rather, such a decision demands reason, impartiality, and common sense. A jury must have a greater assurance of the correctness of its decision, if it is to comply with the constitutional mandate, than the individual jurors are likely to have in making the “weighty” decisions they confront in their own lives.
A number of courts have criticized the definition of the reasonable doubt standard expressed in terms of making important or “weighty” decisions in the jurors’ own lives.1 An instruction that does that tends to diminish and trivialize the constitutionally required burden-of-proof standard. See Dunn v. Perrin, 570 F.2d 21 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 910, 98 S.Ct. 3102, 57 L.Ed.2d 1141 (1978). In Scurry, 347 F.2d at 470, Judge Skelly Wright stated:
A prudent person called upon to act in an important business or family matter would certainly gravely weigh the often neatly balanced considerations and risks tending in both directions. But, in making arid acting on a judgment after so doing, such a person would not necessarily be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that he made the right judgment. Human experience, unfortunately, is to the contrary.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Commonwealth v. Ferreira, 373 Mass. 116, 130, 364 N.E.2d 1264, 1273 (1977), stated:
*1382The degree of certainty required to convict is unique to the criminal law. We do not think that people customarily make private decisions according to this standard nor may it even be possible to do so. Indeed, we suspect that were this standard mandatory in private affairs the result would be massive inertia. Individuals may often have the luxury of undoing private mistakes; a verdict of guilty is frequently irrevocable.
(Footnotes omitted.)
Finally, I submit that it is inappropriate to instruct that a reasonable doubt is not merely a possibility, as the instruction in this case does. Possibilities may or may not create doubt. Depending on the circumstances, a possibility may constitute a reasonable doubt. Whether a possibility is sufficient to create a reasonable doubt depends upon the likelihood of the possibility. Certainly a fanciful or wholly speculative possibility ought not to defeat proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But the instruction does not make the point clear.
An instruction that a reasonable doubt must be a “real, substantial doubt, and not one that is merely possible or imaginary” has been held to be erroneous because, in practical effect, it tends to diminish the prosecution’s burden of proof by implying that the prosecution need not obviate a real or substantial doubt. See, e.g., Dunn v. Perrin; United States v. Flannery, 451 F.2d 880, 882-83 (1st Cir.1971).
In my view, the trial court’s instruction was clearly erroneous and ought to be so declared.

. By contrast, instructions stating that a doubt which would cause a person to hesitate to act have received approval. Holland v. United States, 348 U.S. 121, 140, 75 S.Ct. 127, 138, 99 L.Ed. 150 (1954); Dunn v. Perrin, 570 F.2d 21, 24-25 (1st. Cir.), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 910, 98 S.Ct. 3102, 57 L.Ed.2d 1141 (1978); United States v. Robinson, 546 F.2d 309, 313 (9th Cir.1976), cert. denied, 430 U.S. 918, 97 S.Ct. 1333, 51 L.Ed.2d 597 (1977).