''In re Winship'', 397 U.S. 358 (1970), was a
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
decision that held that "the
Due Process Clause
In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the government except as ...
protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime charged."
[''Criminal Law - Cases and Materials'', 7th ed. 2012, ]Wolters Kluwer Law & Business
Wolters Kluwer N.V. () is a Dutch information services company. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands (Global) and Philadelphia, United States (corporate). Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a m ...
; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg
Robert I. Weisberg is an American lawyer. He is an Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and an expert on criminal law and criminal procedure, as well as a leading scholar in the law and literature movement.
Weisberg wa ...
, Guyora Binder,
/ref> It established this burden in all cases in all states (constitutional case A constitutional ruling is a legal case in the United States in which the United States Supreme Court interprets the Constitution of the United States and makes a ruling that binds all states.''Criminal Law - Cases and Materials'', 7th ed. 2012, Wol ...
).[ The decision did not specify which facts constitute the charged crime.][
In an opinion authored by Justice Brennan, the Court held that when a juvenile is charged with an act that would be a crime if committed by an adult, every element of the offense must be proved ]beyond reasonable doubt
Beyond a reasonable doubt is a legal standard of proof required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems. It is a higher standard of proof than the balance of probabilities standard commonly used in civil cases, becau ...
, not preponderance of the evidence
In a legal dispute, one party has the burden of proof to show that they are correct, while the other party had no such burden and is presumed to be correct. The burden of proof requires a party to produce evidence to establish the truth of facts ...
. The case has come to stand for a broader proposition, however: in a criminal prosecution, every essential element of the offense must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. See, e.g., ''Apprendi v. New Jersey
''Apprendi v. New Jersey'', 530 U.S. 466 (2000), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision with regard to aggravating factors in crimes. The Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial, incorporated against the states th ...
'', 530 U.S. 466, 477 (2000); '' Sullivan v. Louisiana'', 508 U.S. 275, 278 (1993). This case marked a rejection of the preponderance of evidence standard in any criminal cases and expanded the protections afforded by the Due Process Clause.
See also
*List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 397
This is a list of all the United States Supreme Court cases from volume 397 of the ''United States Reports
The ''United States Reports'' () are the official record ( law reports) of the Supreme Court of the United States. They include rulings, ...
References
External links
*
United States Supreme Court cases
United States Supreme Court cases of the Burger Court
United States criminal burden of proof case law
United States children's rights case law
Juvenile case law
1970 in United States case law
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