Court Opinion

ID: 3279143
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 16:52:36.634962+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:13:16.030918
License: Public Domain

I reluctantly concur in the judgment. My consent to the affirmance of the judgment has resulted solely from the compelling force of the precedents as established by the cases to which, in the opinion of my associate, attention has been directed. It is clear that the constitutional guaranty of "due process of law" is in great danger of being set at naught. With but slight extension of the rule, either as promulgated by the statute, or as judicially announced preceding its enactment, in any criminal prosecution in which the district attorney may find it difficult to produce evidence of the guilt of the defendant, he may invoke the doctrine of "ab inconvenienti" and thus shift to the defendant the entire burden of establishing his innocence. The formerly time-honored, but now not-greatly respected, rule of law which requires the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt every essential element of the crime of the commission of which the defendant is charged, would appear to have been given a construction which would seem to be wholly at variance with the plain language of the ordinary rule and completely out of harmony with ancient judicial precedents. It is but a short step backward to a former procedure which permitted prosecution on mere hearsay information, and on which, in the absence of the most positive affirmative proof of innocence, the accusation itself was sufficient to sustain a judgment of conviction. To my mind, the trend of judicial utterance is too much toward the abrogation of many of those constitutional principles which affect human rights and which were most dearly obtained. With the destruction of the doctrine of "burden of proof on the prosecution", no innocent man will be safe; but personal liberty will again become a prized, if not an uncommon, condition or attribute to the citizen of the republic. *Page 306