In re Winship (1969)
- Docket
- 778
- Decided
- 1969-01-01
Summary
Question: Does the requirement that juvenile convictions rest on "preponderance of the evidence" burden of proof, as opposed to that stricter "beyond a reasonable doubt" threshold, violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause? Conclusion: Yes. In a 5-to-3 decision, the Court found that when establishing guilt of criminal charges the strict "reasonable-doubt" standard must be applied to both adults and juveniles alike. The Court noted that by establishing guilt based only on a "preponderance of the evidence," as is customary in civil cases, courts were denying criminal defendants a fundamental constitutional safeguard against the possibility that their fate be incorrectly decided due to fact-finding errors. The Court concluded that mere variations in age among criminal defendants will not suffice to warrant the use of different burdens of proof so long as they all face loss of liberty as a possible sentence.