what does “beyond a reasonable doubt” mean?
In: 7
Would a average, reasonable person have questions to ask about this?
If a reasonable person would have questions that either aren’t answered, or have answers that don’t support the version of events presented, then things haven’t been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Keep in mind this reasonable person is fictional, it’s a platonic ideal of what is reasonable that people can agree on, but it varies by the people and the area.
IE: A bag with drugs is found in someone’s car by the police. They say the drugs are not theirs. That they give a lot of people rides, and don’t know who the drugs might belong to.
The prosecution might try to establish the history and character of the accused, to show they are the kind of person that would own a bag of drugs, and trust that the question ‘who else could those drugs belong to?’ isn’t ‘reasonable’ to the jury.
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