Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In Director of Public Prosecutions v.Labavarde and Anor, Neerunjun C.J. said that article 11(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 6(2) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms would be infringed if "the whole burden is ... cast on the defence by the creation of a presumption of guilt on the mere preferment of the criminal charge".
It is the duty of the judge, in all jurisdictions, when requested, and in some when not requested, to explain the presumption of innocence to the jury in his charge. The usual formula in which this doctrine is expressed is that every man is presumed to be innocent until his guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Court membership; Chief Justice
The Dictionary of Politics: Selected American and Foreign Political and Legal Terms defines the term "Alford plea" as: "A plea under which a defendant may choose to plead guilty, not because of an admission to the crime, but because the prosecutor has sufficient evidence to place a charge and to obtain conviction in court. The plea is commonly ...
Philosophically, guilt in criminal law reflects a functioning society and its ability to condemn individuals' actions. It rests fundamentally on a presumption of free will, such as from a compatibilist perspective (as in the U.S.A.), in which individuals choose actions and are, therefore, subjected to the external judgement of the rightness or wrongness of those actions.
The possibility of lengthy remand periods was one criticism, particularly voiced in common law countries, of the Napoleonic Code and its de facto presumption of guilt. Another reason was the combination of magistrate and prosecutor into a single role. [27]
The opposite system is a presumption of guilt. In many countries and under many legal systems, including common law and civil law systems (not to be confused with the other kind of civil law, which deals with non-criminal legal issues), the presumption of innocence is a legal right of the accused in a criminal trial.
In the United States, establishing "actual innocence" after a conviction may be considerably more difficult than winning an acquittal at trial, however. At trial, the defendant enjoys a due process right to the presumption of innocence, and the State is obligated to prove the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., Cochran v.
The principle of in dubio pro reo (Latin for "[when] in doubt, rule for the accused") [1] [2] means that a defendant may not be convicted by the court when doubts about their guilt remain. The rule of lenity is the doctrine that ambiguity should be resolved in favour of the more lenient punishment.