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345 F.2d 97

Docket No. 18867.

Moore v. United States

District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals

Argued Jan. 21, 1965.

Decided March 4, 1965.

District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1965-03-04

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““A reasonable doubt is a doubt that is based on reason, it is founded on reason, it is a doubt for which you may assign a reason. It is a doubt that connotes something of substance as compared to something shadowy. It is such a doubt as would leave a juror’s mind, after a careful and candid investigation of all the facts and circumstances, so undecided that he cannot say that he has an abiding conviction of the defendant’s guilt, or such a doubt as in the graver, more important transactions of life would cause an ordinary and prudent person to hesitate and pause. “While the law does not require proof to be made to a mathematical or absolute certainty, it does not permit men to be convicted of crime on mere suspicion, conjecture or possibility of guilt. “In order to justify conviction the evidence should be such that when you consider it carefully and apply to it your sound and conscientious judgments as reasonable men and women, you can say that you have no reasonable doubt of the guilt of the defendant. If it would fall short of convincing you to that extent, this defendant should be given the benefit of a reasonable doubt and found not guilty. “A reasonable doubt may arise not only from the evidence produced at the trial, but also from a lack of evidence, for the law does not impose upon a defendant the duty of producing any evidence. “In order to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence must be such that you would be willing to act upon it in the more import”

quoted by 3 later decisions, including Scurry v. United States, United States v. Merlos

“However, since the charge is potentially coercive, its content and manner of use deserve scrutiny.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including United States v. Washington, United States v. Thomas

Relies on Allen v. United States · Jenkins v. United States · Green v. United States

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1965-03-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 53 later decisions — most recently August 2005 · most notably United States v. Thomas (1971), Posey v. United States (1969)

35 federal appellate · 16 state decisions

18019651970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Mr. Roger N. Boyd, Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. Eldon H. Crowell, Washington, D. C. (both appointed by this court) was on the brief, for appellant.

¶2Miss Carol Garfiel, Asst. U. S, Atty., with whom Messrs. David C. Acheson, U. S. Atty., Frank Q. Nebeker and John E. Hogan, Asst. U. S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellee.

¶3Before Bazelon, Chief Judge, and Washington and Bastían, Circuit Judges.

¶4*98BAZELON, Chief Judge.

¶5Appellant admitted his presence at the scene of the robbery for which he stands convicted. He offered a plausible explanation of his apparent complicity. But the jury found him guilty upon sufficient evidence after an exemplary charge on reasonable doubt.1 Although we affirm the conviction, two issues deserve comment.

¶6Appellant contends that a question that the court asked him during his explanation of the circumstances of his arrest prejudiced his defense, by implying to the jury that the judge did not believe an important element of appellant’s story.2 Whether the jury would have so understood the question is highly doubtful. And no objection was made. The question was a small incident in -an otherwise sound trial. We do not regard it as plain error, Rule 52(b), Fed.R. Crim.P.

¶7Appellant also complains about the court’s delivery of the so-called Allen charge. After seven hours, the jury reported itself in “hopeless deadlock” and the judge called it back to the courtroom to deliver that charge.3 The jury returned its verdict in a little over thirty minutes. We do not agree with appellant that the judge must have known that the jury was unevenly divided and therefore should have refrained from delivering the charge. However, since the charge is potentially coercive, its content and manner of use deserve scrutiny.4 Here the trial judge adhered precisely to the summary of the approved charge given by the Supreme Court in Allen.5He in-*99troducéd the charge with only a reminder of the time already spent trying the case and of the Supreme Court’s approval of the charge. There was no objection. In these circumstances, we do not think the impact of the introduction rendered the charge, as a whole, error.

¶8Affirmed.

¶9BASTIAN, Circuit Judge, concurs in the result.

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