An Old Bailey barrister coined the phrase presumed innocent until proven guilty
The familiar words presumed innocent until proven guilty were coined by the British barrister William Garrow during a 1791 trial at the Old Bailey. He insisted that accusers be tested hard in court. The underlying idea, though, is far older and turns up in Roman, Talmudic and Islamic legal traditions.
The principle places the whole burden on the prosecution. It must prove that the crime happened and that the accused did it, usually beyond reasonable doubt, and if doubt remains the verdict must be acquittal. The defendant need not testify, call witnesses or offer any evidence, and staying silent cannot be held against them. Nor may a jury read anything into the mere fact of a charge or a defendant sitting in court with a lawyer.
Roots run deep. Justinian's sixth-century Digest records a rule credited to the jurist Julius Paulus that proof falls on whoever asserts rather than whoever denies, and the emperor Antoninus Pius brought it into Roman criminal law. The Talmud holds every man innocent until proved guilty. Islamic law places the burden on the accuser, and the caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib is quoted urging judges to avert punishment by rejecting doubtful evidence. The French cardinal Jean Lemoine gave the principle a Latin formula based on the inference that most people are not criminals.
The medieval West often slid the other way. Feudal courts let an accused man clear himself if twelve people swore to his innocence, which favoured nobles whose witnesses seemed more credible. Ordeals persisted until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 forbade trials by fire and water. Louis IX of France banned ordeals and adopted the presumption, but judicial torture returned and lasted almost until the Revolution.
In 1935 Lord Sankey, deciding Woolmington v DPP, called the prosecution's duty the golden thread running through English criminal law. The right now appears in Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the European Convention and in constitutions from Canada to Italy. France's 1789 declaration contains it too, despite a popular belief that French courts presume guilt.
Source: Presumption of innocence
