A Loss of Innocence

July 14, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a tremendous asset to the public discourse, and I love the way he comes across in his writing. You might disagree with him, but I don’t see how anyone could dislike him.  And usually, he gets it right.

But he gets one small thing wrong in his “thoughts on the verdict of innocent for George Zimmerman.” 

Back when I taught criminal justice, I brought a Legal Aid lawyer to campus to give a talk about his work. During the Q-and-A, a student started to ask, “If a you’re on trial and a jury finds you innocent . . .”  The lawyer immediately stopped her right there and said, “Since the founding of this republic two hundred odd years ago, no jury as ever found any defendant  innocent.”  The girl was more tha baffled, she was stunned.  Then he explained that in our system of criminal justice, there is no such thing as innocence.  Innocence is a factual matter. Guilt is a legal matter.

The question a jury must answer is not “did the defendant do it?”  And it’s certainly not, “what verdict would do justice?”  The question is much narrower: is there reasonable doubt?  More specifically, is there reasonable doubt that the defendant’s actions make him guilty of the crime as defined in the criminal code – the crime that the state has charged him with?  

The distinction is not particularly important in Coates's column, which I recommend that you read right now (here) – after all, the guy took valuable time away from his Paris sojourn (on Bastille Day yet) and his French lessons to write it. And while you’re at it, read Andrew Cohen (here), who explains why in highly publicized cases, the issues for the jury are very different from the issues that most engage the public.