Criminal Law
The Determination of Criminal Guilt
I. Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
A. In Re Winship
1. Court held that the due process clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime charged.
2. Reasons for the holding?
a. reduces the risk of convictions resting on factual error
b. commands the respect and confidence of the community in applications of criminal law
c. individuals do not fear improper prosecution
d. value determination that it is far worse to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free – distinguishes criminal standard from civil standard
B. Mullaney v. Wilbur (S.C. 1975) – D was charged with murder. Trial court instructed jury that if state proved that D killed the victim unlawfully and intentionally, then it was murder. If D persuaded jury that the killing was in the heat of passion on sudden provocation, then it was manslaughter. Supreme Court held that instructions violated Winship.
1. Court held that the due process clause required state not only to prove that D was guilty of criminal homicide, but also to persuade the jury regarding the facts relating to D’s degree of criminal culpability.
2. Once a defendant satisfies his burden of production regarding an affirmative defense, the prosecution is constitutionally required to disprove the defense.
C. Patterson v. New York (S.C. 1977) – D was charged with murder. He believed he was guilty of manslaughter because of extreme emotional disturbance. N.Y. homicide statute required proof of 3 facts: (1) human death; (2) that the accused caused it; and (3) that the accused intended the result. The statute explicitly made extreme emotional disturbance an affirmative defense. D argued that Mullaney invalidated the statute because the law permitted the prosecutor to shift to him the burden of proving his lesser level of culpability due to extreme emotional disturbance. Supreme Court upheld the statute.
1. Court rejected reading of Mullaney that construed the due process clause to require the prosecution to prove any fact affecting the defendant’s degree of criminal culpability on the grounds that it was unduly restrictive of legislative authority to allocate burdens of proof.
2. Court reasoned that if it endorsed that broad reading, legislatures would be inclined to repeal defenses, or at least not broaden them.
3. Under the due process clause, the prosecution is required to prove every element in the definition of an offense, but the legislature may, if it chooses to do so, allocate to the defendant the burden of persuasion regarding non-elements, i.e., defenses.
D. Analysis of Winship, Mullaney & Patterson
1. In view of underlying values of the due process clause enunciated in Winship, strong case that, since prosecution is required to prove the elements of an offense, even if the crime is a trivial one that will not result in substantial incarceration or stigma, it should also be required to prove the degree of a person’s guilty.
2. Mullaney and Patterson worried about restricting legislative prerogatives.
3. Practical effect of Patterson is to permit legislatures, at least under the aegis of the due process clause, to avoid most of the restriction of Winship by redrafting their statutes to treat the absence of what previously had been an element of an offense as an affirmative defense.
E. What is Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt?
1. “It is that state of the case, which, after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence, leaves the minds of jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, of the truth of the charge … .” (C.J. Shaw in Commonwealth v. Webster)
2. Critical language is that the jurors have an “abiding conviction” – a “settled and fixed” conviction – of the defendant’s guilt.
F. The Model Penal Code (§§1.12-13)
1. Prosecutor is not required to disprove an affirmative defense “unless there is evidence supporting such defense.” It does not specify the strength of the evidence required to satisfy t
is likely to affect the result in some improper way.
a. prejudice is involved if the jury is likely to overestimate the probative value of the evidence or if the evidence will arouse undue hostility toward one of the parties
4. The impeachment exception allows prior crimes evidence to be admissible to impeach a defendant’s credibility – not bearing on guilty or innocence, only on his credibility.
C. Character Evidence and Other-Crimes Evidence
1. Generally, however relative or probative it may be, evidence of past convictions is not admissible to prove a certain character or propensity.
2. Evidence of character is not always irrelevant, but in the setting of the jury trial, the danger of prejudice outweighs the probative value.
3. The central point is that other-crime evidence may be admissible if it is offered for some specific purpose other than that of suggesting that the defendant may have committed the crime because he has a bad character.
4. Signature exception: evidence of other crimes committed by the defendant is admissible when the other crimes “are so nearly identical in method as to earmark them as the handiwork of the accused – the device used must be so unusual and distinctive as to be like a signature.
a. the test is that the method employed in the commission of both crimes must be so unique that mere proof that an accused committed one of them creates a high probability that he also committed the act charged
In order for evidence to be admissible, the facts necessary to make that evidence relevant need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Proof of those facts by a preponderance of the evidence is sufficient.
