Court Opinion

ID: 9628890
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:33:41.375615+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:12.824429
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, Justice,
concurring in the result:
I join the majority’s conclusion that the cumulative impact of missteps in this trial did not fundamentally undermine the fairness of the process or the adequacy of the verdict. I write separately, however, to express reservations about the majority opinion’s unqualified acceptance of the current state of “received wisdom” regarding the efficacy of curative jury instructions. True, as *278the majority notes, “curative instructions are a settled and necessary feature of our judicial process,” and their use has been generally approved by many courts, including this court and the United States Supreme Court. My review of some of the literature and empirical evidence cited to us by defendant, however, persuades me that there is a significant likelihood that such approval has been unjustified and that our collective confidence in the curative instruction as a valuable “tool” is not substantiated by reality.
After summarizing more than two decades of research on the question, one commentator observes that the consistency of results makes it “safe to say that the research demonstrates that it is far more likely that admonitions are ineffective than that they work as the courts intend.” J. Alexander Tanford, Thinking About Elephants: Admonitions, Empirical Research and Legal Policy, 60 UMKC L.Rev. 645, 653 (1992); see also J. Alexander Tanford, The Law and Psychology of Jury Instructions, 69 Neb.L.Rev. 71 (1990) (containing extensive discussion of empirical research and proposing solutions to the problem of ineffective curative instructions). Similar research results eventually led this court to abandon its historical position on jury instructions regarding eyewitness testimony, State v. Long, 721 P.2d 483, 488-92 (Utah 1986), and I believe the time has come for us to reexamine, with the assistance of the trial courts and the litigation bar, our own history of uncritical reliance on curative jury instructions. The suggestions offered by Professor Tanford in the second article cited above are worth consideration:
First, courts must accept that admonitions do not work and may be counterproductive. The assumption that they are effective by themselves should be replaced with the recognition that instructions interact with the adversary system. The only way in which an admonition might help offset the prejudicial effect of improper evidence is if the parties discuss and explain the problem in their arguments to the jury. Therefore, at the trial level, admonitions should not be given unless requested by an affected party who wants to incorporate it into its argument.
Tanford, The Law and Psychology of Jury Instructions, supra, at 107.
The author also suggests that (1) trial judges “screen” requests for admonitions that may be harmful, giving them only if counsel “seems aware of their side effects but wants the instruction as part of a strategy to try to deal with it through education and reasoning with the jurors”; (2) trial judges instruct jurors at the beginning of trial that they will be required to disregard evidence which is successfully objected to and that any reference to a defendant’s criminal record may not be considered as evidence of guilt (this because psychological research demonstrates that forewarning about prejudicial information can reduce susceptibility to it); (3) jurors be interrogated about the foregoing rules during voir dire and commit to following them; and (4) appellate courts abandon or modify the “cured error” doctrine and the portion of the procedural default doctrine that forces counsel to request curative instructions or waive the claimed error for appeal purposes. Id. at 108-09. Tanford concludes:
[M]ore meaningful reforms can be made if we concentrate on admonitions and rules of law based on the erroneous assumption that it is possible to prevent misuse of evidence merely with an instruction. At trial, the litigants probably would receive fairer trials if judges stopped using admonitions and, instead, gave preliminary instructions to ignore evidence ruled inadmissible. On appeal, the cured error doctrine should be abandoned because it is based on a faulty premise. The procedural default rule ... should be replaced with one that merely requires [parties] to object. Perhaps most importantly, abandoning the convenient fiction that admonitions work will compel courts to face up to the difficult task of deciding whether to admit evidence that has both probative and prejudicial qualities. Decisions based on empirically correct assumptions about juror behavior may be more difficult, but ultimately will make the jury trial system operate more coherently.
Id. at 111.
I do not think the majority opinion’s “head *279in the sand” approach1 to the effectiveness of curative instructions contributes to the coherent operation of our system, and I hope that trial counsel and trial courts in Utah will be increasingly sensitive to the complex questions raised by the uncontroverted results of a significant body of empirical research about juror behavior.
ZIMMERMAN, J., concurs in Justice DURHAM’S concurring opinion.

. The majority’s footnote nine illustrates my point. The articles cited therein contain no empirical research but merely offer the opinion of their authors that curative instructions remedy trial court errors in some circumstances. In fact, the cited articles point out that curative instructions are not always a sufficient remedy. See, e.g., Edward J. Imwinkelried, Judicial Remedies for the Exposure of the Jury to “Irrelevant" Evidence, 34 Hous.L.Rev. 73, 83 (1997) (curative instructions standing alone are unlikely to afford adequate relief when jurors are exposed to some types of irrelevant evidence); James W. Gunson, Comment, Prosecutorial Summation: Where is the Line Between "Personal Opinion" and Proper Argument?, 46 Me.L.Rev. 241, 258 (1994) (noting that curative instruction is unlikely to remedy some acts of prosecutorial misconduct because it is doubtful that jurors will follow instructions).