Where does the presumption of innocence/requirement of proof beyond reasonable doubt come from?

[u/Myshkin1234]

Someone told me the ideas originated in old english law not to protect an accused, but to protect the jury/trier of fact, because convicting an innocent person was a sin, so the high standard was required to ensure no-one made a mistake and went to hell. Is this true?

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[u/bug-hunter]

Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat

"Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies" - attributed to Roman jurist Julius Paulus, from the 6th century Digest of Justinian

In the remains of the Western Roman Empire, legal systems varied widely, but in the British and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (as with most Germanic kingdoms), oaths and witnesses were an important part of establishing innocence, with oaths and witness testimony from higher ranked people counting more. In essence, if an ealdorman said a peasant was guilty, the peasant was presumed guilty. This is often described that there was a presumption of guilt, but that's not quite correct - if a peasant accused an ealdorman or king, then the presumption was that they were innocent - their oath meant more.

The presumption of innocence and need for proof beyond reasonable doubt in English common law is an outgrowth of the jury system. This is an important point - the jury came first, by a long shot. In English tradition, the presumption of innocence was formally articulated (and popularized) by Sir William Garrow in a 1791 trial at Old Bailey (which he lost), but jury trials predate the 1215 Magna Carta. That means there were well over 500 years of jury trials without an explicit presumption of innocence.

That's not to say that Garrow invented the concept - Blackstone had written in the 1760's that "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." The entire point of a jury trial is to protect the people from the state, but if the jury is not explicitly told to use a standard of a presumption of reasonable doubt, then there's no guarantee that they were using that standard. And even if you do tell them that's the standard, juries might still do whatever they want, like let murderers walk free because they were white and the victim was black.

It's hard to trace the concept before Garrow and Blackstone, because while we do have older legal cases, we don't necessarily know what the jury was instructed, but presumption of innocence / standard of "beyond reasonable doubt" was pretty revolutionary in Garrow's time (as was the concept that everyone had right to counsel, something else Garrow fought for and popularized).

As a similar example of how hard it is to trace older legal traditions, in Williams v. Florida (1970), the Supreme Court tackled the issue of whether a jury needed to have 12 people, and found that there was no useful explanation for how juries came to generally have 12 people.

Other, less circular but more fanciful reasons for the number 12 have been given, "but they were all brought forward after the number was fixed," and rest on little more than mystical or superstitious insights into the significance of "12." Lord Coke's explanation that the "number of twelve is much respected in holy writ, as 12 apostles, 12 stones, 12 tribes, etc.," is typical.

Blackstone's writings were very influential in America before and after the Revolution. In the early years, it was common to site Blackstone and/or English common law in cases, so England's tradition carried over to the US. That said, Garrow's presumption was articulated while he was a barrister, and not the judge. As a result, while both English and American defense lawyers were arguing for the the presumption of innocence / beyond reasonable doubt doctrine, courts did not necessarily uniformly enforce it - especially since there was no right to a lawyer in state cases until Gideon v. Wainwright (1963). When you see a modern court procedural where the defense attorney gives their impassioned opening and closing statements and hammers home that the burden of proof is on the prosecution, keep in mind that the majority of defendants before 1963 had no lawyer.

(continued)

[u/bug-hunter → u/bug-hunter]

In Coffin v. United States (1895), the Supreme Court for the first time reversed a conviction due to insufficient jury instructions:

A charge that there cannot be a conviction unless the proof shows guilt beyond a reasonable doubt does not so entirely embody the statement of presumption of innocence as to justify the court in refusing, when requested, to instruct the jury concerning such presumption, which is a conclusion drawn by the law in favor of the citizen by virtue whereof, when brought to trial upon a criminal charge, he must be acquitted unless he is proven to be guilty.

States did not necessarily follow along - in Swango v. Commonwealth (1942), the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled:

The final contention is that the trial court failed to instruct the jury, in effect, that the law presumes the innocence of the accused. We have frequently denied this contention and held that the only instruction of this character authorized is one as to reasonable doubt substantially in the language of section 238 of the Criminal Code of Practice (which was given in this case) and that an instruction such as is suggested by appellant is unauthorized as being too favorable to the defendant.

In both cases, the jury instructions did instruct the jury that the standard was "beyond reasonable doubt", but not an explicit presumption of innocence. And again, pre-Gideon, if the judge does not provide this jury instruction, and the majority of defendants did not have a lawyer, no one is really telling the jury.