Court Opinion

ID: 9722729
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:47:57.425861+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:39.439732
License: Public Domain

Kaplan, J.
(concurring, with whom Wilkins, J., joins). The judge’s instructions on “malice aforethought” for murder in the second degree were minimally sufficient but not very informing. As the court indicates, instructions on this matter, even when more carefully devised, must remain obscure to the ordinary juror as long as they derive from the text of the present statute. It is a serious reproach to the administration of criminal justice in this Commonwealth that in the trial of a grievous offense with high penalty a jury may have to proceed under so feeble a light.
The beginning of a remedy would be to revise the statute. When that is attempted it will surely be seen that the entire *431statutory statement on criminal homicide, from murder in the first degree through manslaughter, needs a redoing in which, among other things, the subjective/objective elements of the offenses may be more clearly defined. On its face the Model Penal Code does a far better job than our current statutes, and might well serve as the focus of study.
Correction of the statutes would itself have a tendency to improve the intelligibility of judges’ charges. But I have become persuaded that if we aim at instructions that do more than clear the technical hurdles, instructions that bring a measure of real understanding to jurors, then we must provide the trial judges with “pattern” instructions carefully worked out, covering the basic definitions of the offenses. Without this help the system will continue to turn up instructions for which this court will be making rueful apology. In suggesting the creation and use of pattern instructions as indicated, I do no more than follow the American Bar Association’s Standards for Criminal Justice, Trial by Jury, standard 15-3.6 (a)-(b):
“ (a) Instructions to the jury should be not only technically correct but also expressed as simply as possible and delivered in such a way that they can be clearly understood by the jury.
“(b) A collection of accurate, impartial, and understandable pattern jury instructions should be available for use in criminal cases in each jurisdiction. Counsel and the court should nonetheless remain responsible for ensuring that the jury is adequately instructed as dictated by the needs of the individual case, and to that end should modify and supplement the pattern instructions whenever necessary.”