What is the standard for guilt in a criminal trial?
Most criminal offenses must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Coupled with the presumption of innocence, this is a very high standard for the prosecution to prove. These criminal law procedures were created intentionally, because the American legal system is founded on the idea that it is better to let a guilty man go free than convict an innocent man. In civil cases, there are much lower standards of proof such as the “preponderance of evidence”, which may be oversimplified as a “more likely than not” standard. Beyond a reasonable doubt, however, means that the judge and jury are supposed to resolve all possible doubts about the defendant’s guilt, and conclude that there is no other reasonable conclusion but that the defendant must have committed the crime. Accordingly, most defendants try to establish plausible alternative theories about the prosecution’s theory of guilt in order to raise reasonable doubts about the truth of the charges.
