What, if any, is the legal meaning of the term &quot;benefit of the doubt?&quot; One instance that I am familiar with is &quot;innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.&quot; So if you think that someone is &quot;probably&quot; guilty, but have a &quot;reasonable doubt&quot; covering, say 5%-10% of possible outcomes, my understanding is that you're supposed be give the defendant the &quot;benefit of the doubt&quot; and vote to acquit. In a civil case, where the burden of proof is &quot;preponderance of evidence,&quot; the standard of proof is more like 50-50. In this case, you might give someone the benefit of the doubt if you felt that that party was 50% or more in the right. So is &quot;benefit of the doubt&quot; tied to a quantitative measure or probability? That the party receives the benefit of a very small doubt in the criminal case, and &quot;50%&quot; in the civil case?
Normally, the term &quot;benefit of the doubt&quot;, if it was used, would mean that ambiguities should be resolved in favor of the person entitled to it. This could be applied to contract interpretation or to statutory interpretation. Here is an example: When dealing with restrictions on campaign spending and speech, a court's construction must “give the benefit of the doubt to speech, not censorship. The First Amendment's command that ‘Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech’ demands at least that. Colorado Educ. Ass'n v. Rutt, 184 P.3d 65, 75–76 (Colo. 2008) (ultimately holding that union activities to organize volunteers to walk precincts with a political candidate did not constitute a &quot;campaign expenditure&quot; of a union within the meaning of a state law restriction campaign contributions by unions).
In U.S. practice, double jeopardy protections attach once the jury is seated and this scenario contemplates the change in position arising at trial. A mistrial could be called, or a continuance obtained, if the defendant suddenly claimed an alibi defense, since that amounts of a defendant waiver of double jeopardy protections. But without proof that the witness was tampered with, obtained at the last moment, it can be difficult or impossible to get proof of tampering or to contradict the story with other evidence to undermine the credibility of the witness. The prosecution would probably request a recess in the trial to regroup and try to admit evidence that the testimony changing witness made a prior inconsistent statement to impeach the testimony of that witness, from whomever that witness told the first time (probably a law enforcement officer). But this is still far less convincing to a jury than an affirmative statement from a witnesses about a key fact. If the prosecution could find evidence of defense side tampering and present it to the judge in the hours or small number of days before the trial ends, it might be able to get a mistrial declared. But it is much harder to get a mistrial for witness tampering when the witness shows up and testifies contrary to prosecution expectations than it is when the witness is, for example, killed or kidnapped and doesn't appear to testify at trial at all. But if evidence of neither type could be obtained before the jury was sent to deliberate and evidence was closed, and the jury then acquitted the defendant, it would be very hard for the prosecution to change this result. Perhaps not completely impossible, but very nearly so. The witness could be (and in this circumstance, despite the extreme rarity of perjury prosecutions, probably would be) prosecuted for perjury, but that wouldn't change the acquittal. If a link to the defendant could be found, the defendant could also be prosecuted for witness tampering or obstruction of justice or something similar. But that is hard to prove (and the witness would probably have to be convicted or provided with use immunity for his testimony) to do so. In English criminal law practice, in contrast, the likelihood of having the verdict of acquittal set aside and getting a new trial would be much greater (and the likelihood of getting a recess mid-trial would be greater in far more common bench trials in lower level criminal cases), but it would still be a serious burden for the prosecution that it might not be able to overcome. Lawyers aren't entitled to expect that witnesses will testify exactly the way that they discussed things with the lawyers before trial, and this can be explained away with a variety of excuses that are usually true (&quot;after thinking it over after meeting with you, I realized that I was confused and getting it wrong&quot;), but are sometimes a cover for a change of story that is not sincere. I've had similar things happen a few times in civil litigation and there is only so much you can do about it.
I will assume that your question pertains to the United States. In other jurisdictions, different rules could apply. Context matters. The usual penalty for spoliation of evidence (the technical term for what you describe) in a civil case is a judicial determination or jury instruction that the evidence destroyed would have established the relevant part of the other side's case had it not been destroyed. In all of these cases, your failure to take affirmative action to preserve the evidence once you knew that there was a bona fide likelihood that you would be sued could be held against you by making an adverse determination that the evidence would have been unfavorable to you and possibly also money sanctions. You could not be held in contempt of court for this if these events happened before a case was commenced. In a criminal case, where you are a defendant, you have an absolute right to not incriminate yourself and do not have to take affirmative action to preserve evidence, although this right is limited to criminal cases and your failure to preserve evidence can still be held against you in a civil case. Certainly, in situation 4 you are a potential criminal defendant, so the 5th Amendment protection would apply. In situations 1 and 2, where the precautions were not put in place to facilitate a crime, the 5th Amendment would protect you if you were a potential criminal defendant, but suppose that you are a bystander like a third party ISP representative. If you were a third party, at a minimum you would have to be put on notice of the police need for the evidence, would probably have had to have had the police ask you for the evidence, and of course, would have to be aware that the destruction was imminent and have the power to prevent that destruction. If all those conditions were present, you might be guilty of obstruction of justice (there are precedents for inaction knowing of the consequences in the fact of a police question amounting to obstruction of justice). In situation 3, this kind of action pretty much amounts to being an accessory to some crime before the fact (unless someone was successfully deceived by a very elaborate story) and would likely make anyone involved part of a conspiracy to commit the crime that the destruction of the papers would facilitate. While the papers themselves might have been evidence of a crime or civil wrong, the destruction of the papers might itself be considered part of the crime, regardless of what could be established regarding the actual content of the papers.
An appeal to ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false. That is not in any way the situation here. The defendant knows if he/she has or has not so the only available answers under oath are "yes" or "no" - the jury knows this too so any other answer will be seen as disingenuous. However, this information (affirmative or negative) is off limits to the jury as it could prejudice their decision, hence the mistrial. A quick judge could instruct the defendant not to answer and instruct the jury to disregard the question but if a conviction results the defence team could use the fact that it was asked as grounds for appeal. A judge must decide if the interests of justice are better served by a retrial or a tainted conviction.
"Double jeopardy" applies to a criminal proceeding, that is one that needs to be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt," and involves criminal sanctions such as jail time. Once OJ was acquitted of criminal charges, he couldn't be tried again as a "criminal." The second trial was a civil trial, with a "lesser" standard of proof (preponderance of evidence), and lesser "damages" (money, not jail time). So even though the facts were the same, OJ was accused of violating a different standard, that is a different "law" so to speak. He could be tried for a "tort" just not a crime. Or put another way, "wrongful death" is not the same as murder. The latter requires intent. Wrongful death suggests "tortious" negligence, but not necessarily intent.
Judges do not decide, jurors do (however, if a judge is the fact-finder, then the judge makes such a determination). The main input that the decision-maker gets is a jury instruction. In order to unify "reasonable doubt", "reasonable price", "reasonable delay" and so on, appeal is often made a mythical being, "the reasonable man", so reasonable force would be the degree of force the reasonable man would use in a given situation. I will draw from California criminal instructions ('cuz I have them) but similar instructions can be found across jurisdictions. For example, one instructions says "A natural and probable consequence is one that a reasonable person would know is likely to happen if nothing unusual intervenes". Or from a negligence instruction "A reasonable person would have known that acting in that way would create such a risk". More detailed appeal to The Reasonable Person is found in the justified homicide instruction: Defendant’s belief must have been reasonable and (he/she) must have acted only because of that belief. The defendant is only entitled to use that amount of force that a reasonable person would believe is necessary in the same situation. If the defendant used more force than was reasonable, the [attempted] killing was not justified. When deciding whether the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, consider all the circumstances as they were known to and appeared to the defendant and consider what a reasonable person in a similar situation with similar knowledge would have believed. If the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable, the danger does not need to have actually existed. The defendant’s belief that (he/she/ [or] someone else) was threatened may be reasonable even if (he/she) relied on information that was not true. However, the defendant must actually and reasonably have believed that the information was true. There is no explanation of what it means to be "a reasonable person". Since nobody believes that they themselves are unreasonable, a simple and also wrong way of judging the matter is to subjectively judge whether you yourself would do the same thing, if you were in that situation. Very often, instructions do not even bother to say what "reasonable" means, so (re interpreting expert testimony) "You may disregard any opinion that you find unbelievable, unreasonable, or unsupported by the evidence"; (re corpus delicti) "That other evidence may be slight and need only be enough to support a reasonable inference that a crime was committed"; "Also, before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to find the defendant guilty, you must be convinced that the only reasonable conclusion supported by the circumstantial evidence is that the defendant is guilty", "when considering circumstantial evidence, you must accept only reasonable conclusions and reject any that are unreasonable" The closest the law has come to articulating an objective characterization of "reasonableness" is in "reasonable doubt" instructions. One characterization is in People v. Feldman, 71 N.E. 2d 433. It is not a doubt based upon sympathy or a whim or prejudice or bias or a caprice, or a sentimentality, or upon a reluctance of a weak-kneed, timid, jellyfish of a juror who is seeking to avoid the performance of a disagreeable duty, namely, to convict another human being of the commission of a serious crime A somewhat improved characterization is the Calcrim instruction Proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof that leaves you with an abiding conviction that the charge is true. The evidence need not eliminate all possible doubt because everything in life is open to some possible or imaginary doubt There is room for improvement, but it points in the right direction. On rare occasions, a law is written that actually includes a definition. The Gas Price Spike Act HR 3784 said The term ‘reasonable profit’ means the amount determined by the Reasonable Profits Board to be a reasonable profit on the sale. It is then up to the board to subjectively determine what that profit is. (BTW this did not become law). [Addendum] It's actually very difficult to determine what reasoning judges use in those cases where they are the determiners of fact. They will likely call on their knowledge of law, asking "are these circumstances sufficiently like past circumstance A where the defendant was convicted, or more like B where the defendant was acquitted".
I think it's ultimately a natural extension of the basic concept from Roman Law: ignorantia legis non excusat, i.e &quot;ignorance of the law excuses not&quot; and that in order for that to be workable laws can only truly obtain proper binding force when they are promulgated. In simple terms someone can't claim innocence through ignorance because the knowledge of what the law is has been made easily available to them. Thus the law can operate on the presumption that the people it applies to are aware of them. Indeed there have been occasional instances in history where someone could not have been reasonably expected to know that what they did was against the law and this has been taken into account.
You are quoting standards that are applicable during an appeal. So in this case, the defendant was brought to trial, was found guilty by a jury, and is now appealing that conviction. During that initial trial, the evidence was supposed to have been weighed neutrally. In an appeal, the appellate court is not attempting to re-litigate the entirety of the case. That would be costly and slow in addition to burdensome on witnesses that might have to be called again to testify. Instead, it defers to the trial court for things like the determination of facts. The standards you quote show that an appellate court is only going to overturn a lower court's verdict as insufficient if the lower court's ruling is manifestly unjust. The prosecution and the defense presented evidence on a particular element of the crime at trial. The jury determined that the prosecution met its burden, and proved the element beyond a reasonable doubt. The appeals court is not going to substitute its judgement for that of the jury particularly when the jury had the opportunity to assess the credibility of different witnesses that may not be possible from a simple text-based transcript. If the trial court convicted and the appeals court determines that the conviction was reasonable if the evidence was viewed from the standpoint most favorable to the prosecution, then the sufficiency standard would be met and the appeal would be denied. The appeals court would only overturn the verdict as insufficient if no reasonable juror could possibly have concluded that the state met its burden of proof given the evidence presented.