Jury instructions & CA law

B

Big Caliber

New member
A couple of years ago I served on my first jury. I found it fascinating. We had to decide an "ADW" case, (assault w/ deadly weapon, a small wood little-league bat). (It might have been "AWD"). When we were sent to deliberate the case we were given oral and written instructions by the judge re: the particular laws that dealt with this case. Talk about an eye-opener! These pages laid out the law in very specific and easy to understand terms. You have no idea how difficult it can get to defend yourself or family in your own home using ANY kind of force w/o violating the law. However, those jury instructions spelled it out. I later asked the judge and my city atty if there is anything published out there that would make any or all of the penal code deciferable w/o having to attend law school. Nope. So I'm asking anyone here if they know where to access a criminal law publication that would "spell it out" like the jury instructions do?? Thanks.
 
Normally jury instructions are supposed to be written by the judge for that specific case to cut through the BS and as you found out tell the jury exactly what is involved and what laws. Since each case is supposed to be different such a publication could not in theory exist. Most judges keep a set of templates for standard cases such as DUI and seldom modify them.

You see many times that a case is appealed on errors in jury instructions. I have seen some templates posted on the Internet but they usually are very vague to how to apply to a specific case. There are some good books that try to simplify the law but even then they get into so much legalese until they become hard to follow by the average citizen. You hear about cases that the juey verdict seems so crazy that it causes an uproar but if you had been on the jury and seen the evidence and how it applied to the law you could understand their thinking. Worst of all is when the media starts trying to explain it to the public and really makes a mess of it.
 
While most lawyers will try to write their own jury instructions, there are "standard pattern jury instructions" that lay out the crimes in an element-by-element way.

You may be able to get them from the clerk's office, or they may be on the internet somewhere already.
 
Thank you all for the replies. Yes, each case is different. The article on jury nullification is a little thick for me but I will continue to study it. I found the PJ instructions to be along the lines I was looking for. I guess what I'm after is/was for a given case. The one I sat on boiled down to: when does self defense become assault? How far do you retreat in your own home & how many warnings must you give to an unwelcome intruder who entered unlawfully, b4 you can take the action that would be deemed reasonable by a jury of ones peers? What is entry? From what I've read so far, self defense is a very gray area that can and will get you in deep doo-doo if you don't know exactly what your laws say you can & can't do in the situation that you are unfortunate enough to find yourself in. I thought a little knowlegde of the law would be a benefit, not another source of fear and frustration. oh well.
 
Every citizen should be required to serve on at least two DUI juries. I have served on more than a dozen juries for different types of "crimes" and it really is an eye opening experience. We talk about each case being different and they are but you start to pick up on lawyer actions and BS. My first jury I was enthralled at the prosecution and defense methods and actually thought they were making sense. Then I was on a jury where the defense was almost word for word like the first one. Once in the jury room I found that those people to dumb to get out of jury duty are a lot smarter than you think. They also pay attention to the judges instructions. :eek: I have no problems with any of the verdicts we ever came up with and a lot of thought went into every one of them even if the public thinks different.

Sometimes it is one key thing that can be the difference. For instance on one case where a fellow was on trial for speeding he made a great case in his defense. Once in the jury room we were discussing all of the facts and having a hard time deciding. All of a sudden one juror says "Did he ever actually say he wasn't speeding"? He had not and we found him guilty. Jury duty will teach you more about the law in one or two cases than you will ever learn reading on message boards or watching TV. I have faith for the most part in our jury system and when you hear of a jury screwing up you can bet it wasn't the jury but the rest of the court. The OJ case was one screwup after another and I really don't fault the jury on that one.
 
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