Court Opinion

ID: 9471322
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:29:16.749132+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:21.252719
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I readily accept the court’s reasoned disposition of the instructions on permissible inferences, but I am tired of these continual complaints. If the evidence does not warrant the inferences, the defendant is entitled to a directed acquittal. If they are warranted, why should not the jurors be told so in everyday language, lest they think there are artificial rules restricting their natural processes of thought? To say there is an available inference unfavorable to the defendant is no more burden-shifting than to say there is evidence unfavorable to him. The court does not have to charge on *525the burden of proof in every second sentence.