Why most surprising “Not Guilty” jury verdicts happen; understanding the system design

Just two days ago I wrote a three page article about the George Zimmerman trial where I talked so much about the jury and their unpopular verdict, but I didn’t talk about how jury decisions are reached. I feel that I owe it to myself & my audience to talk about how our justice system is designed and how this is the cause of most “Not Guilty” verdicts.

When a person is accused of a crime and faces a trial, the prosecution presents its case and the jury makes a decision based on the evidence presented. The jury have two options to make a decision about the defendant; “Guilty” or “Not Guilty”. There’re only two possible decisions; convicting or acquitting the defendant.

There is a possibility of the jury making an error, because the jury consist of people and people are fallible. In fact the jury can make only two types of errors. Convicting an innocent person wrongly or acquitting a guilty defendant. The question is which type of error is more serious? Because the two errors are negatively related, an attempt to reduce one increases the probability of committing the other.

Convicting an innocent person is considered (and I agree with this) very serious in our justice system, as a result the system is designed to make the chances of this type of error happening small. This is why the system put the burden on the prosecution to proof the guilt, the defense need not to proof anything. The judges instruct the jury to find the defendant guilty only if there is “evidence beyond reasonable doubt”. Without enough evidence, the jury must acquit the defendant even though there might be some evidence of guilt.

Since the two errors are negatively related & our justice system is arranged to minimize the probability of convicting innocent people, then the probability of acquitting guilty people is relatively high. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a US Supreme Court Justice, once said “Better to acquit 100 guilty men than convict one innocent one”.

This explains why most jury trials that the public think otherwise end up in a “Not Guilty” verdict, it’s not because there is no evidence of the defendant committing the crime, but it’s because there is just not enough evidence to find him/her guilty of the crime. That’s why you never hear the phrase “Found Innocent”, because we can never tell if a defendant is actually innocent, all we can say is that the evidence is not enough to suggest that they commit the crime.

So our justice system is designed to rather let more guilty people walk free than wrongly convict one single person. This is a conscious choice & we must live by the consequences of the choice, but I guess the question is what the consequence of our next best alternative is? If you are the type who supports the second alternative, then I suggest you watch the movie hurricane starring Denzel Washington and based on a true story.