welcome back everybody to criminal law in this final lesson looking at theories and principle and principles of the criminal law what I'm going to be doing is talking about the concept of the burden of proof now again this is part of more the substantial procedural elements of criminal law so talking a lot about criminal evidence and the way in which the burden of proof and the standard of proof is interpreted in that regard so this is going to be something of an introductory overview of how the burden of proof operates within the criminal law system specifically within the adversarial system of of of the the common law jury trial and we're going to be focusing on one specific case for the most part it is a landmark case that involves a murder charge which we'll get to and of course this is going to be something that we're going to look at again as we get on to looking at the substantive law behind uh murder in more detail so this is one of the basic principles pertaining to the criminal justice system within the common law jurisdiction of England and Wales and this is generally The View that um we have what is known as a presumption of innocence it is uh the procedural requirement that is there's an individual is essentially who is accused of a crime an individual who is a defendant accused of a crime is presumed to be innocent and it is for the Trier of the case to make the argument of the defendant's guilt now this relates to the burden of proof who is burdened with the obligation to prove the facts of a particular issue to prove guilt this does not pertain necessarily to the standard of proof the standard of proof is not who has to make the the who has to do the proving but it is to what level do they have to make that proof uh possible so in a in a civil case for example it would be on the balance of probabilities whether or not um given a case would it on balance the probability be the case that the individual who is accused of a particular thing did that particular thing or could be found to be guilty of that particular thing the burden of proof and the standard of sorry the standard of proof in in criminal jurisdiction is a little bit higher and we'll get to that in future lessons time but when we look at this the burden of proof essentially enshrines this principle within the criminal law jurisdiction in England and Wales of the presumption of innocence the basic presumption which has to be adherred in the majority of criminal trials which will get to some exceptions at the end of this lesson um is this idea that the defendant is presumed to be innocent and it is not up to the defendant to prove that they are innocent it is not up to the defendant to prove that they are not guilty it is instead the positive obligation of the prosecution to make the case that the defendant is guilty the the burden that is placed is placed on the Trier of the case the the people who are in in charge of making the prosecution and to essentially um to prove the the the guilt of an individual rather than the individual proving their innocence or proving their non-guilt in a particular way now one of the most famous cases in English law actually um exemplifies this particular fact and this is the case of Wallington and the director of public Post Acute prosecutions sorry from 1935. we're going to explain the facts of this case we're going to explain the major defense that was levied in this case and then we're going to talk a little bit about um the argument that um the presidential innocence and the burden of proof was enshrined as part of this case um this isn't where the burden of proof came from this isn't like the precedent that you would sign but it is just a an exemplifying example of uh of of of of where the director of public prosecutions tried to make a case of reversing the owners onto the defendant and the courts made it very clear that that is not what the purpose of the common law uh criminal jurisdiction actually is so in terms of facts we have the defendant here who is a person by the name of Reginald warmington who was a farm laborer and who had married an individual by the name of Violet in 1934. they had a child the a year later so they were married with a child and then shortly after having a child the two would fall out and violet would then resultingly leave the family home and go and live with her mother for some time now this is really where we start to see the facts of the particular crime take place in response to this in response to the fact that violent left the family home in December 1934 Reginald would take a double-barreled shotgun and travel to his mother-in-law's house and shoot and kill Violet this is what happens now he would of course be subsequently arrested and charged with the murder of violet in terms of Mr warmington's defense he argued that he was not guilty of murder owing to the fact that he didn't have the sufficient what we describe as men's rare for the murder since he had not intended to kill Violet we'll get to this in the next lesson when we actually look at the substantive elements of criminal liability but men's Raya essentially just refers to a the guilty mind such that when we are talking about murder when we were talking about murder in this instance it is not enough to have just committed the ACT which is um the the killing of the individual killing of violet you have to have done so with the guilty mind with the intent to kill uh that individual um in order to sufficiently have not only the act itself the actor's race but also the men's Raya the guilty mind and so as a result of this given the fact that he argues that he was not intending to kill Violet um it meant that he his defense was well I can't have been found guilty of murder because I didn't have the sufficient intent to kill therefore not the sufficient men's rare we'll get to again uh the the sort of the criminal elements of murder when we get onto that particular offense so instead what his plan was was to try and get her back by threatening to kill himself so his argument was um I went to the house with this shotgun I was going to point this gun at myself and I was going to threaten to kill myself unless Violet came back uh and and and resume presumably our relationship and so in the course of events taking place the gun had accidentally shot and he had accidentally shot his wife violet now this case became incredibly important because what it did was confirm the presumption of innocence within criminal law and this culminated in a very famous speech by this count Stan uh stanky um through uh Sankey sorry through this idea of the golden thread now what he says is that throughout the web of English criminal law one golden thread always is always to be seen that is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner's guilt subject to the defense of insanity and subject to any statutory exception this all came from the view in his second trial by judge Swift and judge Swift um essentially that the case was so strong against Reginald on the facts that they reversed the onus they said that because the the case for murder was so strong it was up to you to show that the act that the shooting was accidental because we have so much evidence and we have because we have such a strong case for the the fact that you went and you went and murdered this particular individual you need to prove that it wasn't murder that it was actually um that it was actually this this this story that you are trying to uh convey to the jury to the to or at least to the judge um and so as a result of this what the trial just does is reverse the owners place the burden of proof onto the defendant Reginald warmington in the ability to essentially show that if that the shooting was accidental it was now up to him to show that the shooting was accidental which is essentially him being um forced to show that he is not guilty and so therefore he therefore now has the burden of non-guilt rather than the burden of proof for guilds which is on the prosecution there was a presumption of guilt and the burden of proof was on the defendant to show otherwise they was presumed because the case was so strong it was presumed that it was more murder automatically and it was up to Reginald to actually make the argument that it wasn't this is of course reverse owners now in terms of reverse owners offenses there are actually some that exist in some circumstances there are offenses where there actually is this onus to show non-guilt and this is placed on the defendant um quite controversial in a lot of examples um potentially quite discriminatory in a lot of examples and it happens a lot for example in the case of terrorism legislation so if we look for example at the the 2000 terrorist act specifically section 57 subsection one it says that a person commits an offense if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to reasonable suspicion that his possession is for the purpose connected with the commission preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism so essentially this is a this is in terms of possessing some kind of article which is um connected to terrorism so maybe some kind of terrorist handbook for example and they automatically um give rise to this suspicion and it is up to the defendant in this particular example to uh prove otherwise to prove the other reason why that they have this particular item within their possession and so as a result of that this particular provision within the terrorism Act is actually something of a reverse owner's offense in the sense that it is now up to the defendant to prove otherwise and it is just assumed in those circumstances that a person has a reasonable that they possess and the particular item for the purpose connected with the commission preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism