> in the UK a jury questioned its meaning, the judge got snottily arrogant over it and ditched the case ... Interesting to me that the judge was so unable to an

> in the UK a jury questioned its meaning, the judge got snottily arrogant over it and ditched the case ... Interesting to me that the judge was so unable to answer the question, that he ditched a whole trial. If you're talking about Huhne & Pryce, that's just wrong. The jury was discharged because after 2 days of deliberations they told the judge that they couldn't come to a verdict (which 10 of them agreed on). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_jury http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hung_jury . I don't know where you got the idea that the judge got defensive because he didn't know how to answer what reasonable doubt meant, but it's utter nonsense. It's a very common question for juries to ask. The appeal courts have debated several times what the best guidance is. The judge was following the current guidance, which is tell the jury to treat it as ordinary english words and refuse to give any more specific definition. If each judge gave their own favourite interpretation of what 'beyond reasonable doubt' means (e.g. p(false positive) < 5%, or whatever), then the standard of proof you'd be tried under would depend on the judge, which would be obviously unacceptable.