Yes, but only if the jury's allowed to consider facts not presented in court.
If you consider only what the prosecution and defense presented, there's no
grounds for reasonable doubt. It's only when you consider facts outside what
were presented that doubt creeps in.
Myself, I'd say the jury isn't
allowed to come to a verdict based on this knowledge, but they're allowed to ask
the judge to permit visual confirmation of the facts about the intersection's
layout and allow the prosecution and defense to respond to any discrepancies
between those facts and the testimony in court. And if the judge won't allow it,
the jury's entitled to find there's reasonable doubt about the facts (not
necessarily that the defendant's not guilty, but that there's reasonable doubt
about critical testimony and they've been denied the information they need to
resolve that doubt one way or the other). [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|