In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970), was a United States Supreme Court decision that held that when a juvenile is charged with an act which would be a crime if committed by an adult, every element of the offense must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, changing the previous standard of preponderance of the evidence. The case has come to stand for a broader proposition, however, which is that in any criminal prosecution, every essential element of the offense must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. — Excerpted from In re Winship on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.