Opinion ID: 1203248
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Comment on Complexity of Jury Instructions

Text: (64) Both the trial court and the prosecutor commented to the jury on the length and complexity of the jury instructions. Defendant complains these comments produced basic misapprehensions about the importance of the jury instructions, in violation of his state and federal constitutional rights to due process, fundamental fairness, an unbiased jury, and a reliable determination of penalty. Defendant's brief quotation takes the court's comment out of context and distorts it. The court said as it began to instruct the jury in the guilt phase of trial: This is the time in the trial of the guilt phase of this matter for the court to read you the instructions. I am required by law to read these to you. It is not one of the real interesting and exciting ways to spend a morning, but it is of utmost importance. [ถ] As I say, it is also required by law. [ถ] You will find these instructions somewhat complex. Let me tell you in advance that I am going to give these instructions to you prior to your going into the jury room to deliberate. So when you do go into the jury room to deliberate, you will have the exact copy from which I have read. So you might want to consider the possibility of not taking notes during these readings because you will have the exact instructions in there. [ถ] If it helps you to remember and focus on what we are doing here to take notes, obviously you are free to do that. [ถ] In my 16 years of dealing with criminal law in one part of it or another, I have never encountered a situation where it was necessary to give this many instructions. The most instructions that I have ever given ... is probably half this many. We have 110 pages of instructions. [ถ] It is the process of working these instructions out that has occupied counsel and I during this relatively lengthy break between the taking of testimony and today. [ถ] It is necessary under the law to give you these instructions. They address themselves and try to explain to you and define for you some pretty esoteric legal concepts. [ถ] I will try to read them in a manner that will allow you to get some of the flavor and some of the feeling of what we are doing. [ถ] I think the best thing to do, as I say, is just to try to listen and try to feel the flow of it and follow it in your mind and understand that you will have them present before you, and you will be able to study them at whatever length is necessary for your deliberations. There is absolutely no merit to defendant's complaint that the italicized language inevitably suggested that defendant's criminality here was twice as bad as any [the judge] had seen, or suggested that the jury was not expected to bother to understand or follow the instructions, in violation of his rights to due process, fundamental fairness and an unbiased jury. It is patently clear the court was soliciting the jury's patience and assiduity in trying to understand the volume of instructions. Defendant also claims the prosecutor added to the court's error by telling the jurors not to be concerned if they did not understand all the instructions. She said: You have all sat here today and listened to a bunch of instructions, I think the court at various points called esoteric or difficult. [ถ] I sat there listening and I had [them] in front of me, and even having heard them before they are confusing. They are. Not only to lay people, but people within the criminal justice system as well. Don't feel concerned if you don't understand any of them or only a few of them. Any suggestion that the jurors could proceed to judgment without ever understanding the instructions would be a gross misstatement of law, but, of course, the jurors were instructed to follow the law as stated by the judge, who had emphasized so carefully the importance of the instructions. The prosecutor herself, far from suggesting to the jury that the instructions could be ignored, spent a large proportion of her time in closing argument meticulously explaining the instructions and applying them one after the other to the evidence produced at trial. We see no error or possibility of harm to defendant.