Brown v. Greene

“Our judicial system provides jurors with an awesome responsibility, placing a defendant’s liberty in the[ir] hands.... Jurors cannot perform this role as protectors of liberty if they are not properly instructed about that role.... ” Fong v. Poole, 522 F.Supp.2d 642, 666 (S.D.N.Y.2007) (Gerard E. Lynch, Judge).

This case illustrates the perils of instructing a criminal jury that not every fact must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt or, as the court instructed at Petitioner-Appellant Dwayne Brown’s trial, that “factual findings ... can be made” by “50.1 to 49.9.” While strongly voicing our…