Presumption of innocence

“ The evolution of the principle of the presumption of innocence, and its resultant, the doctrine of reasonable doubt, make more apparent the correctness of these views, and indicate the necessity of enforcing the one in order that the other may continue to exist. ”

“ The principle that there is a presumption of innocence in favor of the accused is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law. ”

“ Now, the presumption of innocence 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. In other words, this presumption is an instrument of proof created by the law in favor of one accused, whereby his innocence is established until sufficient evidence is introduced to overcome the proof which the law has created. ”

“ While Rome and the Mediaevalists taught that, wherever doubt existed in a criminal case, acquittal must follow, the expounders of the common law, in their devotion to human liberty and individual rights, traced this doctrine of doubt to its true origin,-the presumption of innocence,-and rested it upon this enduring basis. The inevitable tendency to obscure the results of a truth, when the truth itself is forgotten or ignored, admonishes that the protection of so vital and fundamental a principle as the presumption of innocence be not denied, when requested, to any one accused of crime. ”

“ The presumption of innocence would be violated if public statements made by public authorities, or judicial decisions other than those on guilt, referred to a suspect or an accused person as being guilty, for as long as that person has not been proved guilty according to law. ”

“ Unless this presumption of innocence shall have been overcome by proof of guilt so strong, credible, and conclusive as to convince your minds, beyond every reasonable doubt, that the defendants are guilty, and unless the evidence is of such a nature as to exclude every reasonable doubt of guilt, then you ought to acquit the defendants. ”

“ Presumption of innocence — Securing accused persons. Every person being presumed innocent, until pronounced guilty by the law, no act of severity which is not necessary to secure an accused person shall be permitted. ”

“ It would have gone far to destroy the presumption of innocence to which he was entitled until otherwise and lawfully proved guilty. Finally his lawyer presumably would have been cognizant of these facts. ”

“ I have taken it upon myself to so sift the matter to the bottom, that, if any innocent person has been wronged, his innocence shall be made clear, and also to punish the guilty. Where there is mystery there is generally crime, and where there is crime the presumption is that innocent beings have been brought to sorrow. Whether right Or wrong, I have the firmest conviction that there is some story of wrong-doing underlying this mystery, and if I am right--which time and good fortune can alone establish--this wrong-doing must have inflicted suffering upon innocent persons. ”

“ The presumption that men are innocent until they are legally proved to be guilty, the facilities granted to the accused for substantiating his innocence by retaining the ablest advocate, the methods for sifting evidence now in use, had no existence then. In crimes against the sovereign, real or supposed, men were presumed to be guilty until they proved themselves to be innocent, and that proof was involved in endless difficulties. ”

“ There are circumstances in connexion with it that tell against me. I cannot bring myself to acknowledge what the accusation is. And I am incapable, perfectly incapable, of proving my innocence. I can only assert my innocence. I assert it, sir, on my oath, as a Christian. It is useless to appeal to my honour as a man. ”

“ Is your honor of such small amount, that you refuse even to accept the privilege of defence? Are you so well prepared yourself to refute the evidence which has been collected against you, that you need no more? Or have we indeed heard aright, that you have resolved to let the course of justice proceed, without one effort on your part to avert an inevitable doom? This would seem a tacit avowal of guilt; else, wherefore call your doom inevitable? If conscious of innocence, have you no hope, no belief in the Divine Justice, which can as easily make manifest innocence as punish crime? ”

“ What greater Proof can Innocence require? What greater can it admit! Who is there among ourselves that might not, by the same Artifice, have been accused, and by the same Evidence convicted of the Crime? ”

“ Though written in the form of romantic narrative, it presents one of the strongest cases we recollect to have seen, in which innocence is overborne by powerful but false appearances of guilt. It is certainly a strong illustration of the danger of convicting a fellow creature, upon what is technically called presumptive evidence, a topic upon which the gentlemen of the bar are furnished with as wide a field for the display of professional ingenuity, as upon any other in the whole compass of jurisprudence. ”

“ The conscience must be very dull and wretched indeed, that can be satisfied with such flimsy apologies. God will not pardon crimes merely because we might have committed still greater ones. Suppose a man were accused of robbery, and the crime clearly proved, would a judge and jury be satisfied of his innocence, and acquit him, because he did not also commit murder? ”

“ I grew confused, "I thought you believed in his innocence."
"Refusing to believe that he is mixed up in a crime is quite another matter from vouching for a person's respectability," she remarked decidedly. ”

“ Even under that rule you could not find a verdict of guilty against John W. or Stephen W. Dorsey. If the rule were that you are to find guilty if you have a doubt as to innocence you could not do it; how much less when the rule is that you must have no doubt as to their guilt. The proposition is preposterous and I will not insult your intelligence by arguing it any further.
Now, then, there is another thing I want to keep before you. When a man has a little suspicion in his mind he tortures everything; he tortures the most innocent actions into the evidence of crime. ”

“ If there be error, it lies with the deceiver, not the deceived. And you, my sons and disciples, banish from your faces and your breasts every expression and every thought unworthy of your honest companion, and your upright sect. For remember, if to abhor falsehood and vice be noble, to distrust truth and innocence is mean. ”

“ Having before me a person who excites my suspicion, I am inclined to think him guilty on certain evidence, but I fear to judge lest I should be in error, because there is evidence also of innocence. If my suspicion is based on good grounds, it is natural and lawful ”

“ That good old maxim of the English common law, 358that assumed a man to be innocent until he was proven to be guilty, was reversed. Men were assumed to be guilty, and they had to prove their innocence if they could, or suffer the penalty of assumed guilt. ”

“ It is all very well to talk about the support of conscious innocence, but it is reasonable to conclude that a man who is by his nature utterly incapable of crime suffers much more under its false imputation than does the darkest of criminals. ”

“ Why should he be accounted innocent, to whose guilt at least twelve good men and true had positively sworn? The presumptive innocence of the accused is a modern fiction which has tacitly grown up in a society conscious that its strength is too firm to be shaken by the misdeeds of single offenders, and therefore willing that any individual suspected of offence against its laws shall retain all the advantages on his own side. ”

“ It is the strangest problem of humanity—one too, for which the closest investigation can never quite account—to trace the progress by which innocence becomes guilt, and how those who formerly trembled to think of crime, are led on to commit that at which they once shuddered. ”

“ I think the proposition is so evident, that it wants no enforcement; it comes to you from the voice of the nation, which, thank God, has at last found admittance within these walls.
Innocence is of so delicate a nature, that it cannot bear suspicion, and therefore will desire inquiry; because it will always be justified by it. Guilt, from its own consciousness, will use subterfuges, and fly to concealment; and the more righteous and authoritative the inquiry, the more it will be avoided; because the greater will be the dread of punishment. ”

“ But the fact of knowledge, a jury might infer from very slight evidence, and my client’s seeming bastardy and strange ignorance of her father, and of her mother even, beyond the certainty that she once lived and cared well for her young days, were better fitted to excite suspicion and clothe her in the garb of an adventurer, than to secure pity or be urged as arguments of innocence. ”

“ Better far to allow fifty guilty individuals to escape, than permit one innocent person to suffer. And this is not a solitary case where evidence as clear-—but yet as false—-has been brought against the culprit; and the truth of his innocence has been discovered when it was impossible to repair the injury. ”

“ In the case of sheer innocence, indeed, as Roger's was—or in one of much doubt and secresy, where the client denies all guilt, and the counsel sees reason to believe him—let the advocate manfully battle out his cause: but where crime has poured out his confessions in a counsellor's ear—is not this man bought by gold to be a partaker and abettor in his sins, when he strives with all his might to clear the guilty, and not seldom throws the hideous charge on innocence? ”

“ When it is enough for the condemnation of the accused that the compurgators shall declare that they are ignorant or doubtful as to his innocence, who is there that will not express doubt when they know that he would not have been condemned to purge himself if he had not been violently suspected? ”

“ I felt a growing conviction that, spite of appearances, the young man was guiltless of the deed imputed to him, and might be the victim, I could not help thinking, either of some strange combination of circumstances, or, more likely, of a diabolical plot for his destruction, essential, possibly, to the safety of the real perpetrators of the crime; very probably—so ran my suspicions—friends and acquaintances of the three gentlemen who were to be our fellow-travelers. My duty, I knew, was quite as much the vindication of innocence as the detection of guilt ”

“ However, I flatter myself, you will take warning from this instance of your misconduct, and be taught, that it is impossible to fix bounds to a bad action, or to say, I will go on so far in error, and then I will stop: when once you consent to the smallest deviation from innocence, it is not possible to determine how deeply you may be involved in guilt, or to what lengths of mischief or wickedness your first fault may conduce. ”

“ Being disinterested, I may expect Credit; but there is yet a Reason why I shall speak less freely. 'Tis an unfortunate Circumstance, that with the Innocence of this Person, there is connected the Crime of another; if not the intentional, at least the effectual Crime: The Evidence that absolves the one accuses the other; and it is one of those Incidents, under which Humanity is wounded by the Means, while it glories in the End. ”

“ To make innocence suffer is the greatest sin; how then is it possible to make the suffering of the innocent a justification for the criminal? Why should a man be willing to let the innocent suffer for him? ”

“ Every one would despise the delinquent, who, while passing to trial should impose on his fellows with protestations of innocence, when he knew the judge acquainted with his guilt, and that he would soon disclose it, and open it to public view. ”

“ In this view, you seek to find an innocence that is not Theirs but yours alone, and at the cost of someone else's guilt. Can innocence be purchased by the giving of your guilt to someone else? And is it innocence that your attack on him attempts to get? Is it not retribution for your own attack upon the Son of God you seek? Is it not safer to believe that you are innocent of this, and victimized despite your innocence? Whatever way the game of guilt is played, there must be loss. Someone must lose his innocence that someone else can take it from him, making it his own. ”

“ For your Lordships must have observed that it is rare indeed, that, in a continued course of evil practices, any uniform method of proceeding will serve the purposes of the delinquent. Innocence is plain, direct, and simple: guilt is a crooked, intricate, inconstant, and various thing. The iniquitous job of to-day may be covered by specious reasons; but when the job of iniquity of to-morrow succeeds, the reasons that have colored the first crime may expose the second malversation. The man of fraud falls into contradiction, prevarication, confusion. ”

“ I have known a rogue, for this very reason, make a better defence than an innocent man could have done in the same circumstances of suspicion. Having no consciousness of innocence to support him, such a fellow applies himself to all the advantages which the law will afford him, and sometimes—if his counsel be men of talent—succeeds in compelling his judges to receive him as innocent. ”

“ I am ready to forget my position as judge, and to give you my help, but you must see yourself that to prove the other side guilty of slander, you must prove yourself innocent. What I want from you is an informal and strictly confidential declaration, for the case against you is a serious one, and of such a kind as to require all your efforts to wipe off this blot upon your honour. Your enemies will not respect your delicacy of feeling. They will press you so hard that you will either be obliged to submit to a shameful sentence, or to wound your feelings of honour in proving your innocence. ”