No. of Recommendations: 9
I love this argument. It basically says that the prosecution doesn't need to actually prove anything; the jury just needs to say, "This a$$hole is guilty" and it's all good.
No, it doesn't. And the fact that you say that means you don't understand the argument.
The prosecution needs to prove all of the elements of the crime. If all the elements of the crime are agreed unanimously by the jury to have been proven, then a guilty verdict is in order. However, the jurors do not need to be unanimous about how the elements of the crime have been proven. If Bob threatens Alice with a weapon, and the jurors are unanimous that he did in fact threaten her with a weapon but disagree whether that weapon was a knife or a gun, Bob can be convicted of assault with a deadly weapon - because the jurors are unanimous on the element being proven, even though they differ on what the weapon was.
