When is “Reasonable Doubt” Completely Unreasonable?

Following the R-Kelly case was like watching Chappelle’s jury selection skit.”Okay, I’d have to see a video of him singing “Piss On You,” two forms of government ID, a police officer there to verify the whole thing, four or five of my buddies and Neil taking notes, and R. Kelly’s grandma to confirm his identity.” Well, that is reasonable!

The post-aquittal jury interviews proved that, not only does the current jury pool love R&B and post-coital urination, but their concept of “reasonable doubt” is batshit insane. Someone should have told them the judge wasn’t referring to the Jay-Z recording! The claim by the prosecution was simple. There is Rob Kelly, there is a 14 year old girl, Rob is having sex with her and now he is going to piss on her. Open meet close! But here comes the reasonable doubt part – the defense claimed, and those dumbasses who couldn’t get out of jury duty believed, that this was part of a grand conspiracy against R-Kelly.

The thought was that four high school drop-outs and former felons mastered the “Hollywood FX” plugins for Pinnacle Video Editor so siblimely that they were able to take Rob’s face from music videos and overlay it on top of someone else having sex (and then urinating) with a minor. Uhhh…reasonable? That could be the sh**iest video program ever made! Why not claim Windows Movie Maker or Ulead Video Master 1.2? His defense attornies were quoting scripture, referring to Rob Kelly as a martyr and other notable legal atrocities–all of which the jury bought.

Shaggy’s “Wasn’t Me” defense will undoubtedly be in every legal textbook from now until eternity, but is that “reasonable”? These jurors missed the concept I think. Lexicon defines it as, “The level of certainty a juror must have to find a defendant guilty of a crime. A real doubt, based upon reason and common sense after careful and impartial consideration of all the evidence, or lack of evidence, in a case.” Would reason or common sense dictate that four dudes, without enough ambition to finish high school, could master one of the least intuitive/powerful video editting programs enough to make a CGI rendition of R-Kelly pissing on a 14 year old girl? That’s reasonably doubtful, at best.