Difference between innocent and not-guilty

Factual Questions
21

The difference is burden of proof, and the difference is intentional, not absurd.

Because being convicted of a crime is a Very Big Deal, because you are dealing with a person’s liberty (maybe even their life, in the US), criminal charges must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Not only must you be pretty darn sure the guy did it, you must be so sure that to doubt the fact of his guilt would be unreasonable. The doubt cannot be “fanciful, imagined, or conjured up to avoid performing an unpleasant task.” (Black’s Law Dictionary, quoting U.S. v. Johnson, 343 F.2d 5.)

For civil cases, OTOH, the burden of proof is preponderance of the evidence, that is, evidence tending to show the fact to be proven is more probable than not. You as a juror may still have some shred of doubt as to whether it really happened – because, really, how can anyone ever know to 100% certainty what really happened if they didn’t see it with their own eyes? – but if the weight and sufficiency of the evidence indicates a particular fact is true, then under the “preponderance of the evidence” standard, you as the juror find that it is true.

Before you decry the differing standards as absurd, which one would you change? Would you have people convicted of crimes on only a preponderance of the evidence? Or would you award plaintiffs damages for wrongful conduct only if they can prove the wrongful conduct beyond a reasonable doubt?

There are very good and solid reasons for having different burdens of proof in criminal and civil matters, and the fact that the burdens are different does not itself make the difference absurd.

Now, if you accuse a man of a crime under the higher standard, and the jury finds him “not guilty,” why should a later civil suit therefore be absurd? Recall that in the U.S. “not guilty” doesn’t mean “innocent” – “We’ve decided he didn’t do it” – it means “not proven” – “We’ve decided the State did not successfully prove its case.” A jury may have very strong private convictions that a defendant is factually guilty (that he did in fact commit the crime), but if the State has not met its burden of removing all reasonable doubt, then the jury must acquit. But because a “not guilty” verdict means “the state didn’t provie its case,” it is not dispositive in a civil case. Why? Because the civil case is concerned with whether it is more likely than not that the guy actually did it, not with whether the State successfully proved he did it. So a “not guilty” verdict in a criminal trial is certainly relevant in a civil suit – the defendant almost always will be able to point out he was charged and acquitted – but it is not dispositive – it does not bar the case.

So the two different burdens of proof are not absurd and, because there ARE two different burdens of proof, allowing both cases is not absurd either.

22

I’d be interested in knowing the reasons for this. It may go beyond what we can tackle here so if you prefer to point me to some good reading on the subject that’d be fine too.

Perhaps having differing standards does make sense in many cases. In an auto accident they may find there were mitigating factors…wet pavement, poorly marked safety signs, worn brakes, etc… I seem to recall a civil court can find you a percentage guilty (may be a better term for that). Basically you are (say) 35% at fault for what happened.

But murder?

You asked which standard I would apply and in the case of murder I would apply the more restrictive criminal standards. If a criminal court found me not guilty (and I understand this does not equal innocent) to then be hauled to a civil trial and accused of the same thing seems crazy. I realize depriving someone of liberty and (perhaps) life are deemed extreme penalties and worthy of recognition as such but someone nailing me with a million dollar judgment is pretty severe as well (to me anyway).

Where the line between whether the criminal trial standard should hold and the current way of doing things would take far more thought and likely someone more educated in these matters than me. If indeed there should be two standards.

Note I am not trying to be obstinate and I like to think I am willing to have my mind changed on this. This is just a deep rooted notion in me that all this does not make a great deal of sense as a matter of justice.

23

:confused: Broadly, I gave you the reasons for it. It is considered a more serious matter to deprive someone of their life or liberty than it is to deprive them of their money, and so a stricter burden of proof is required to punish some one of something than there is to merely require them to pay for the damage they have caused. I’m not sure what might be good reading on it, but I will say that IMO the Wiki article on “burdens of proof” is not good.

You’re talking about some different things. “Burden of proof” (BOP) is the standard of proof the plaintiff (in a civil case) or government prosecutor (in a criminal case) must meet to win the case (civil) or convict the defendant (criminal). In the U.S., there are two different burdens of proof: beyond a reasonable doubt (criminal cases) and preponderance of the evidence (civil cases). (Aside: Note that some authorities state there is a third possible burden of proof, clear and convincing evidence, but I disagree; “C&C” is more properly a description of the quality of the evidence than a different BOP.)

“BOP” is different from “mitigating factors,” which will factors tending to reduce the defendant’s responsibility for the action or crime. They don’t change the BOP applicable to the question of whether he actually committed the action or crime.

“BOP” is also different from “percentage of fault,” or apportionment of liability, which again is an inquiry as to the defendant’s responsibility for the action or crime, not an inquiry into whether he actually did it.

Before you talk about things like mitigation or apportionment of damages (“To what extent should he be held responsible for doing this thing?”), you must first decide if he did the thing in the first place. That is the liability (civil) or guilt (criminal) phase of the trial, and that is the question you answer under the applicable BOP.

If you understand that “not guilty” does not equal innocent but instead only equals “the State failed to meet the burden of proof,” why does it seem crazy for you to have a civil trial that addresses the question the criminal trial did not answer, namely: Did the guy do it? Because the civil damages that would be awarded are awarded if the guy did it, and the criminal trial did not answer that question. You say that you understand that “not guilty” does not equal “innocent,” but that fact that “not guilty” does NOT equal “innocent” is precisely why a civil trial SHOULD be allowed. Because the issue of whether the guy did it or not, and should pay for the damage he’s done, has not been answered.

Far from not making sense as a matter of justice, IMO it would be unjust to have a single standard (either “preponderance of the evidence” or “beyond a reasonable doubt”) for ALL cases, whether civil or criminal. If you apply the lower standard (preponderance of the evidence) to criminal matters, then you risk sending people to prison who are innocent – a result you can’t 100% avoid, of course, but that is greatly lessened by a higher BOP. How is that fair? OTOH, if you apply the higher standard (beyond a reasonable doubt) to civil matters, then you let people hurt each other and only rarely have to pay for the consequences, because if you can show even a reasonable shadow of a doubt, then you will not be held responsible for your own actions. How is that fair?

24

In addition to the excellent summary by Jodi, let me just add this.

This is not an accurate restatement of what the criminal verdict says. There is more to “murder” than merely proving that A plunged a knife into B. And it’s not semantics that makes it so.

“Unfortunate accident” is not the only possible distinction between one killing and another.

Again, this is not an accurate restatement of what the civil trial is trying to prove.

No, and this insistence that it’s all just murder reflects an intentional creation of an absurdity. “Murder” is not equivalent to “killing,” not under U.S. law and not under the law of any country, so far as I know. There are perhaps a dozen or more kinds of killings under the law, and murder and “unfortunate accident” are only two of them.

If you want to know more about the distinctions among different kinds of killings, then I suggest you start looking up legal concepts such as murder/second-degree murder, first-degree murder, manslaughter, negligent/unintentional manslaughter, intentional manslaughter, felony manslaughter, wrongful death, homicide, and others (not all terms are valid in all jurisdictions).

What’s absurd is sitting there and reducing it all to mean the same thing and then saying “it’s absurd to make any distinctions here, because I don’t see any!” You haven’t even tried to understand what the distinctions are and why they are made. Figure out what the terms mean, understand the distinctions, explain the distinctions (or ask someone), and then create an argument that one or more of the distinctions shouldn’t be legally recognized.

25

Whoah, Whack-a-Mole! Let us be careful in our terminology. A civil case no more deals with murder than a majority of the SDSAB enacts the laws of science. Murder is a specific crime chargeable at common law (if anywhere still honors the common law charge) or under the specific laws of various states and nations – and in general it means that someone can be convicted of the crime of intentionally, willfully, with malice aforethought taking the life of another – or occasionally taking a life in the process of committing a different felony.

The taking of a life is not necesarily murder. That’s why most states have a whole cluster of homicide crimes to charge under different circumstances.

O.J. Simpson is, manifestly, not guilty of the murder of his wife. A properly empaneled jury arrived at that verdict using proper procedure, and they are the only people in this country entitled to make that decision. He may very well be guilty as sin of taking her life – and that’s what the civil trial for wrongful death found.

“Wrongful death” is a civil case. It’s not the state charging someone with a crime; it’s someone filing a lawsuit. But just as I may have a valid course of action because the contractor you hired came onto my property and dug up my hedge, growing along my side of the property line, and can sue you about it, so too if you engage in reckless driving and cause an accident that kills my wife, I can sue you for her wrongful death. And that’s completely distinct from whether the D.A. decides to charge you with a crime for that accident.

It’s not murder. That word has a distinct meaning. If every death were murder, every hospital in America would be bankrupt or with its total staff in jail. If someone’s action or negligence causes the death of another, that someone can be sued for wrongful death – regardless of whether he can be proven to have committed a crime.

26

There is, at least in California. It made the news here some years ago when some guy went for and got the much harder, and very rare innocent instead of not guilty.

27

Polycarp, while that is all true, Whack-a-Mole is absolutely correct that it is irrelevant in the case of Orenthal James Simpson. His defense at the criminal trial was that he didn’t do it, not that he was involved, but it wasn’t homicide. The civil case wasn’t based upon an assertion that he was involved, but not intentionally.

The sole and whole difference between the two trials was the level of proof needed to accomplish the burden of proof on the “complainants.” In the murder trial, the state failed to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that O. J. killed his wife. Yes, technically, what they failed to prove was that he intentionally killed his wife with malice aforethought (murder one), but the defense wasn’t based upon proving that he did it without malice, or that he did it unintentionally. It was based upon an assertion that the state failed to show that he was involved in it in any way.

In the civil trial, the jury accepted the assertion of the plaintiffs that O. J. killed his wife. They didn’t have to find he did it intentionally, but that’s irrelevant because the dichotomy was over what he actually did, not why he did it. The reason they ruled in favor of the plaintiffs was that they were willing to accept that the evidence showed more likely than not that he did it.

Why might these disparate conclusions have been reached? Well, let’s take the simple issue of the blood samples. In the criminal trial, there was much issue made of the potentially poor handling of the blood samples that were tested. Issues were raised about chain of custody, issues were raised about lab procedures, and issues were raised about possible police planting of the evidence in the first place. Now, the civil jury might well have decided that this was much ado about not much of anything, and, thus, considered the blood match report to be sufficient to establish the presence of O. J. at the crime scene, bleeding from wounds. But the criminal jury would have been hard-pressed, on hearing exactly the same evidence, to decide that they had no reasonable doubt that O. J. was present.

To offer an analogy: you find evidence that your son has been drinking. This evidence includes empty beer bottles where you know he sometimes spends time, difficulty getting up in the morning and complaining of typical “hangover” symptoms, etc. You confront your son who denies drinking, and offers a possibly valid alternative explanation for the “evidence.” You are reasonably certain he is drinking, but in the face of his denial, would you be willing to go out on a limb, stake your reputation as a parent on being right, when there is this little voice whispering in your ear that, “Maybe he didn’t really do it?”

We have this standard for a good reason. We are worried about error. We know it will happen; humans aren’t infallible. So the question is, what do we do about it? There are two types of error in a case like this: he did it, and we fail to find so, and he didn’t do it, and we find he did. In a civil case, with only money at stake, we are willing to let the chance of error lie about evenly with either possibility. With a criminal case, we are quite thoroughly adverse to punishing truly innocent people, so we set the bar for conviction higher. Sometimes, that means the truly “guilty” (meaning they really did break the law) go unpunished.

Which is the true answer to Whack-a-Mole’s concerns. (and has been stated, perhaps less verbosely, already by others)

28

I believe you are mistaken. There is never any possible such finding by a trier of fact, nor is it a possible conclusion of law for the judge to make. It simply isn’t available in United States criminal courts, even those in California.

29

I quoted you but I read Polycarp and Jodi’s posts as well so will touch on them all.

I understand there are distinctions in legal definitions of killing someone (and I agree with them at least generally).

My point here is the civil versus the criminal trial for a given case. In that case (whatever it is but we’ll go with plunging knife into person X) the facts do not change. In the criminal trial they are interested in, “Did you plunge the knife into person X?” In the criminal trial they are interested in, “Did you plunge the knife into person X?”

In both cases they are looking at the same deed. The difference only lies in the punishment. Polycarp took me to task for saying the civil court is looking in to murder and that is not what civil courts do. Fine. But they are looking at the facts that in this case denote a murder. They can call it what they like but in the end they are trying to determine if you were in some way responsible for a person’s death. Only the punishment differs and in our hypothetical the civil court WILL be looking at you knifing someone. In the end if they think yeah…you did it smacks of a sort of double jeopardy (stop before replying to that…I know double jeopardy is a criminal deal…just saying it feels like it).

Jodi talked about the reasons why it is a good idea to have a higher bar to get over for a criminal case than a civil case. Perhaps…being in massive debt for the rest of my life may not be as bad as being in prison for the rest of my life but it is not minor either. If my choice is debt forever or 5 years in prison I might seriously opt for prison. Why should someone tapping my wallet be easier?

I liken it to being a 12 year old on a playground and pushing someone. The Principal calls me into her office to determine if I should get detention. They decide they cannot say with some certainty what happened so they let me go. The next day I am called into the Dean’s office to revisit the charge because the kid’s parent’s called pissed off. The Dean does not need as much to go on…just figures something happened and I should fork over my lunch money for the next week as punishment. My protestations that I just went through all this with the Principal and she found no cause to punish me makes no difference.

I know in such a situation I would feel rather jerked around and pissed off.

30

I believe that in Scotland there is a third verdict - ‘not proven’.

The verdict of not proven is essentially one of acquittal. In all respects the verdicts of not guilty and not proven have exactly the same legal effects. In practice it is thought that a verdict of not proven simply means that the judge or jury have reasonable doubt as to the accused’s guilt.

31

A nice quote from glee’s link: