The Indiana Court of Appeals has ordered a new trial for an African-American convicted on drug charges, saying that prosecutors discriminated in at least one instance when they struck all blacks from a panel of jurors. At issue were statements by three jurors, one black and two white, showing they misunderstood the burden of proof faced by the state:
In at least one instance, the judges said, the reason given for striking a black from the panel applied equally to two white jurors who were allowed to serve.
In that case, prosecutors struck a black juror referred to by the initials L.S. after he overstated their burden of proof by saying they would have to prove their case "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
Prosecutors didn't object to two white people who gave similar answers, one saying Killebrew's guilt would have to be proved so that "there is no possible doubt" and another saying he "would have to be 100 percent sure that they were guilty."
Granted, certainty (100 percent, no possible doubt or beyond a shadow of a doubt) is almost always impossible to come by. But "beyond a reasonable doubt," the burden faced by the prosecution in a criminal trial and the highest standard used in court, can be a bit tricky. If I'm a juror, and I have a doubt or two about the defendant's guilt, how do I know if my doubts are "reasonable" or "unreasonable"? What standard to I used to determine that? And how far does the prosecutor have to go before he is "beyond" that reasonable doubt?
There's also the issue of some "peremptory" challenges being allowed and some not; that's another word that doesn't quite mean what it used to. But that's another post altogether.
