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4 Miss. C. L. Rev. 47 (1983-1984)
Not Guilty and Innocent - The Problem Children of Reasonable Doubt

handle is hein.journals/miscollr4 and id is 59 raw text is: NOT GUILTY AND INNOCENT-THE PROBLEM CHILDREN OF REASONABLE DOUBT Vincent T. Bugliosi* I. INTRODUCTION The terms not guilty and innocent have an interesting, almost symbiotic, relationship to each other in American criminal juris- prudence. A defendant is legally presumed to be innocent, but he pleads not guilty to the charges brought by the prosecution. A defendant usually presents evidence to show, and he argues, that he is innocent. And courts regularly instruct the jury that they are to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant. In the end, however, he is found to be guilty or not guilty. If the verdict is not guilty, newspapers normally say he was found to be innocent. The legal distinction between not guilty and innocent is more than a semantic parlor game. The principal function of the trier of fact in a criminal case, to wit, to determine if the prosecution has met its burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, cannot be properly carried out without a grasp of the subtle but critical distinction between the two terms. This article presents an analysis of the background and pur- pose of trial by jury, presumption of innocence, and burden of proof as bases from which the substantive distinction between not guilty and innocent emanates. With more particularity, the article focuses upon the widespread misuse of the word innocence in lieu of not guilty, and the by-product of this misuse-the erroneous statement by courts, practicing attorneys and drafters of jury in- structions that the function of the jury is to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. The article illustrates some of the obvious as well as more circuitous means by which these errors and their resulting confusion are transmitted to the jury, princi- pally by way of jury instructions. * Member of California Bar. B.B.A., University of Miami, 1956; L.L.B., U.C.L.A., 1964. The author served as a Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney from 1964- 1972, and is the co-author of two non-fiction crime books, HELTER SKELTER and TILL DEATH Us Do PART. Article reprinted, with permission, from 4 CRIM. J.J. 349 (1981).

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