In the Coffin v. United States case of 1894, the Supreme Court ruled on a matter involving presumption of innocence in criminal cases. The defendants, Frederick A. Coffin and William P. Hyde were charged with conspiracy to defraud the government by submitting false claims for payment through their company which supplied envelopes to the U.S Post Office Department. They appealed their conviction arguing that they were not presumed innocent until proven guilty as required by law because jury instructions did not explicitly state this principle. The Supreme Court agreed with them and overturned their convictions stating that it is a fundamental principle in our justice system that every person accused of a crime has an absolute right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt; hence, juries must always be instructed accordingly during trials. This landmark decision firmly established presumption of innocence as an essential part of American jurisprudence and set precedent for future court rulings ensuring fair trial rights are upheld.

In the dissenting opinion for Coffin v. United States, Justice Harlan argued that while it is important to uphold the presumption of innocence in criminal cases, this principle should not be used as a tool to prevent juries from making reasonable deductions based on presented evidence. He asserted that if all facts and circumstances point towards guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then jurors should not be instructed to ignore their logical conclusions simply because there might exist some hypothetical scenario where the defendant could possibly be innocent. In other words, he believed that instructing jurors about presumptions may confuse them more than enlighten them and potentially obstruct justice by setting an unreasonably high bar for convictions.