Opinion ID: 2551366
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Context: Trial Court Invitation to Find Change in Reinstruction

Text: That brings us to appellant's central contention: In offering the jury the new third paragraph of reinstruction to compare with the corresponding paragraph of the initial instruction  an offer preceded by an invitation to find change  there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury came to an understanding that impermissibly lowered the burden of proof. We agree. In the first place, when listening for change in the reinstruction, in comparison with the initial instruction, there is a reasonable likelihood that jurors perceived new substance in the judge's addition of the shadow language  language that cut in the government's favor by ostensibly creating three, no longer two, levels of doubt (as elaborated in appellant's contentions summarized earlier). [53] Second, the reinstruction became unbalanced from added weight on the government's side created by an extended rat-a-tat explaining what reasonable doubt is not. The court's use of new, legally correct though more graphic, emphatic, and repetitive language appeared to lighten the government's burden of persuasion. [54] Therefore, even if the language of reinstruction itself was not inherently a violation of due process, there is a reasonable likelihood that the judge's second instruction conveyed to the jury a lower standard of reasonable doubt than due process requires, and that the jury came to its verdict accordingly. [55] The government's reply to this contextual argument stresses: (1) that the reinstruction contained nonsubstantive changes in what remained a single sentence  (emphasis in government's brief), and (2) that the reinstruction was balanced because the trial court had repeated all three paragraphs of the instruction, with six sentences describing what reasonable doubt is and only two sentences spelling out what it is not. The first argument misses the point because it altogether fails to take into account the particular impact of the modified Payne language as reinstruction. We may be dealing with a single sentence, but, in contrast with the penultimate, eighteen-word sentence in the Smith instruction, the new replacement sentence in the reinstruction is long and forceful and includes several additional nots (or the equivalent). In the context here, after more than four days of jury deliberation, there is a reasonable likelihood that the new language had an effect akin to that of the controversial dynamite or anti-deadlock charge used to prod an apparently deadlocked jury to come to unanimity. [56] After reinstruction, the jury took only two more hours to arrive at its guilty verdict. The government's other argument  that the reinstruction is not unbalanced because six sentences explain what reasonable doubt is while only two sentences say what it is not  is considerably overstated and thus not convincing. The first three sentences, comprising the first paragraph of the instruction, are devoted to explaining the difference in burden of proof in civil and criminal cases, presumably to alert jurors who may have served in civil cases that the burden in criminal proceedings is greater: reasonable doubt, not more likely true than not or highly probable. [57] We cannot discern why those sentences should be counted as instruction about what reasonable doubt is when they offer no specifics about what reasonable doubt itself means. [58] When we consider the three other sentences on which the government relies for balance, an express statement of what reasonable doubt is appears only twice (coupled with one followup, explanatory sentence). [59] In the reinstruction sentence on which appellant relies, however, describing what reasonable doubt does not include, there are three nots and a never. [60] (The sentence immediately preceding that one includes two more clauses stating what reasonable doubt is not, adding both a not and a nor.) [61] The government, therefore, has not convinced us that the reinstruction, in context, was balanced.