I've been hearing this term a lot lately, but I don't what it means.

What exactly is "reasonable doubt"?

I've been hearing this term a lot lately, but I don't what it means.

What exactly is "reasonable doubt"?

1. In the United States, juries must be instructed to apply the reasonable doubt standard when determining the guilt or innocence of a criminal defendant, but there is much disagreement as to whether the jury should be given a definition of "reasonable doubt."

    

   Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_doubt

http://bit.ly/PV0ZiL

 

In all seriousness, it is a 2014 canadian thriller or a saying that states the standard of evidence to justify accusation of a crime. 

http://bit.ly/PV0ZiL

 

In all seriousness, it is a 2014 canadian thriller or a saying that states the standard of evidence to justify accusation of a crime.

Correction: To justify *conviction* on criminal charges. The standard to bring charges is probable cause, which is "a reasonable person would think that this thing (e.g. a charge that a person has committed a crime) is probably right". Reasonable doubt, to my ears, sounds like "No reasonable person could *possibly* think that there's any real doubt about this, besides extremely remote aliens-came-down-and-manipulated-evidence level doubts. If you have serious doubts about this, that's kind of weird." That's just me, though.

The best way to think about it in legal terms is the standard of proof needed to send someone to prison - there's reasonable doubt about something iff you don't believe it strongly enough to be willing to send someone to prison over it (if it were illegal, that is).

Outside of legal contexts, reasonable doubt just means "I think there's a chance this isn't right". In non-legal contexts, it doesn't have a formal meaning, just the standard combination of "reasonable" and "doubt".