State v. Rounds

• Decision Date: 29 April 1884
• Citation: 76 Me. 123
• Parties: STATE OF MAINE v. SAMUEL ROUNDS.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

76 Me. 123

STATE OF MAINE v. SAMUEL ROUNDS.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

April 29, 1884

ON exceptions from the superior court.

Indictment. The case and material facts are stated in the opinion.

Ardon W. Coombs, county attorney, for the state.

H. D Hadlock, for the defendant.

The court misstated the law in instructing the jury that " The law only requires that degree of certainty in the minds of jurors before rendering a verdict of guilty, as would exist in their minds in coming to a conclusion on matters of grave interest and importance to themselves." Wharton Crim. Law, § 707; Bishop, Crim. Prac. § 819; Com. v Webster, 5 Cush. 320; Wells on Law & Facts, § 572; Blocker v. State, 9 Texas Ct. of App. 279; Wallace v. State, 9 Texas Ct. of App. 299; Robertson v. State, 9 Texas Ct. of App. 209; Jane v. Com. 2 Met. (Ky.) 30.

To justify a verdict of guilty, it is not only necessary that the jurors should be so convinced by the evidence that they would venture to act upon that conviction, in matters of the highest importance to their own interests; but they must, moreover, be so convinced as to exclude from their minds all reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused.

The foregoing instruction which the court gave the jury, tested by these principles, is liable to several objections. If it did not expressly authorize the jury to find a verdict according to the preponderance of the testimony, it authorizes them to weigh the facts and circumstances, and when thus weighed, if their conclusion was, not that the accused was guilty, but that there was that degree of certainty in the case that they would act upon it in their own grave and important concerns, then they were justified in returning a verdict of guilty.

In this respect the instruction was misleading and calculated to induce the jury to believe that they had a right to decide according to the weight of evidence.

Men frequently act upon their own grave and important concerns, without a firm conviction that the conclusion upon which they act is correct.

This degree of certainty is wholly insufficient to authorize a verdict of guilty in a criminal case. Counsel further cited: State v. Oscar, 7 Jones (N. C.), 305; Smith v. State, 9 Tex.Ct.App. 150.

PETERS C. J.

Two bills of exceptions are presented. The important question in the exceptions taken during the trial, relates to a definition given by the learned judge, of the term " reasonable doubt."

Mr. Bishop (1 Crim. Proc. § 1094) says: " There are no words plainer than reasonable doubt, and none so exact to the idea meant. Hence, some judges, it would seem wisely, decline attempting to interpret them to the jury. Negative descriptions may be safe, and, perhaps, helpful; as, that it is not a whimsical or vague doubt or conjecture, not an impossibility, … but it is a reasonable doubt." It is not an unreasonable doubt.

The very term implies that there may be doubts not reasonable or rational. It cannot be a merely possible doubt, for anything relating to human affairs may be in some way subject to possible doubt. It is such an actual and substantial and well founded doubt as would be entertained by a reasonable and conscientious man,--" such a doubt that the reason for it can be examined and discussed." In State v. Reed, 62 Me. 129, the following was decided to be a correct definition: " It is a doubt which a reasonable man of sound judgment, without bias, prejudice or interest, after calmly, conscientiously and deliberately weighing all the testimony, would entertain as to the guilt of the prisoner." It is not enough to establish merely a probability of guilt. The rule requires that the guilt shall be established to a reasonable, but not an absolute, demonstrative or mathematical certainty.

What real use can there be in further enlarging or emphasizing an explanation of the term, reasonable doubt? Of course, it is not legally erroneous in this state, to inform a jury that the guilt of the prisoner is to be shown " to a moral certainty." That term has been in too much use to be prohibited now. In State v. Reed, surpa, an intentional omission of the phrase was held to be not erroneous. In Massachusetts it may be omitted, although asked for by the prisoner. Com v. Costley, 118 Mass. 1. The use of it is criticised in an able and instructive article in the Am. Law Rev. (Vol. 10, p. 663). Mr. Bishop says of it: " Assuming it to be synonymous (with reasonable doubt), practically it will darken more minds, of the classes from whom our jurors are drawn, than it will enlighten." The term is often misleading, or may be, unless judicially explained to the jury. It may be taken to mean more than it really means. Moral certainty, in its popular sense, may be more than moral certainty in the legal sense.

In the present case the learned judge, who presided at the trial went still further towards the outer circle of judicial limits, and said to the jury, that " the law only requires that degree of certainty in the minds of jurors, before rendering a verdict of guilty, as would exist in their minds in coming to a conclusion on matters of grave interest and importance to themselves." This exposition of reasonable doubt is strenuously objected to by the counsel for respondent. This definition is substantially in the words of Lord TENTERDEN in a capital case long ago, and has been frequently used by judges since. See 3 Green. Ev. 13th ed. § 29, note. Of this definition Mr. Bishop, in section of Crim. Procedure before cited, says: " If there were no doubt of its accuracy,...