336 Slide – American State Trials 1918 Volume X Leo Frank Document

804 XY, AMERICAN STATE TRIALS.

Honor will charge you that you should not convict this man
unless you think he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

A great many jurors, gentlemen, and the people generally
get an idea that there is aomething mysterious and unfathom-
able about this reasonable doubt proposition. It’s as plain as
the nose on your face. The text writers and lawyers and
Judges go around in a circle when they undertake to define it;
it’s a thing that speake for itself, and every man of common
sense knows what it is, and it isn’t susceptible of any defini-
tion. One text writer says a man who undertakes to define it
uses tautology—the same words over again, Just remember,
gentlemen of the jury, thet it is no abstruse proposition, it is
not a proposition way over and above your head—it’s just
a common sense, ordinary, everyday practical question. In the
83rd Georgia, one of our judges defines it thus:

A’ reagonable doubt iz one that is opposed to an unreasonable
doubt; it is one for whieh a reason ean be given, and it is one that
is basod on renson, and itis such a doubt eh Ieaves the, mind in
Smee eae en, moer i engeme w y

Tf you have a doubt, it must be auch a doubt as to control
and decide your conduet in the highest and most important
affairs of life. It isn’t, gentlemen, as is said in the case of
John vs, State, in 33d Geongia, ‘a vague, conjectural doubt or
a mere guess that possibly the accused may not be guilty’’; it
ien’t that; “it must be such a doubt as a sensible, honest-
minded man would reasonably entertain in an honest investi-
gation after truth.”’ It must not be, as they say, in the case
of Butler vs. State, 92 Georgia, ‘‘A doubt conjured up”’; or as
they say in the 83 Georgia, ‘(A doubt which might be conjured.
up to acquit a friend.”’ ‘It must not be,’’ as they say in the
63 Georgia, ‘‘a fancifal doubt, a trivial supposition, a bare
possibility of innocence,”"—that won’t do, that won't do; “it
doesn’t mean the doubt,’’ they say in 90 Georgia, “‘of a crank
or 8 man with an over-sensitive nature, but practical, common
sense is the standard.”

Conviction can be established as well upon circumstantial