Probably long Overdue
CALIFORNIA
Jury instructions made simple
Panel to vote today on 700 newly worded judge's directives
- Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, August 26, 2005
For decades, jurors in California have had to ponder mind-numbing instructions from the judge like this: "Circumstantial evidence is evidence that, if found to be true, proves a fact from which an inference of the existence of another fact may be drawn."
It's enough to cause even the keenest juror to furrow a brow in hopes of comprehending the nearly incomprehensible. But now relief appears to be in sight.
The state Judicial Council -- composed mostly of lawyers and judges -- is scheduled to vote today on nearly 700 newly worded jury instructions. Passage is a virtual certainty, which means that come January, judges will be talking in language everyone who speaks English can understand.
For example, the definition of circumstantial evidence will come with an illustration that goes something like this: If a witness saw someone come inside wearing a raincoat covered with drops of water, that's circumstantial evidence that it might be raining.
It's all part of an eight-year project to make instructions -- the orders judges give before sending jurors into their deliberations -- understandable to people who may have had no other contact with the court system.
"We say to jurors that there are rules that govern how you must decide, and then we do it in the least efficient way, by reading it to them, and in language that is very challenging to understand," said Carol Corrigan, a state appeals court justice in San Francisco and chairwoman of the 29-member task force that drafted the new instructions.
Instructions contain the legal rules jurors are supposed to apply as they work toward a verdict. In a criminal trial, the judge describes what the prosecutor must prove for a conviction, sets boundaries for defense claims such as self-defense and mental impairment, outlines the burden of proof for each side, and tells jurors what they can consider in evaluating witnesses and evidence.
Before the 1930s, individual judges in California formulated their own instructions to juries. But then a committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court began drafting statewide instructions, taking the language from the text of the laws and court rulings defining them. The instructions have been updated periodically, but they remain confusing for lay jurors, as the task force assigned to come up with the new, streamlined instructions found.
"California Supreme Court rulings and the Penal Code, especially, were not written to be understood by an audience of ordinary people," observed task force member Peter Tiersma, a linguist and law professor at Loyola University in Los Angeles.
Corrigan's favorite tale of misunderstanding was relayed to her by another judge, who -- as the law allows -- merely read his instructions to the jury without providing written copies.
The case was a murder trial in which jurors had to decide whether the defendant killed his victim with "malice," which has a complex definition involving an intentional act performed with conscious disregard for human life. After a couple of days of deliberations, Corrigan said, the jurors approached the judge in bewilderment, pointed out that the trial involved a fatal shooting, and asked, "What's this mallet you keep talking about?"
In that case, the judge presumably was able to clear up the confusion. But jurors may not always realize they've misunderstood an instruction, and judges, fearful that a creative answer could be grounds for appeal, may not always be helpful; Corrigan said a common response by judges who are asked for clarification is to "read the same instruction, only louder and slower."
Tiersma said it's possible that defendants have been wrongfully convicted because of misconstrued jury instructions.
"If the jury doesn't understand the difference between first- and second- degree murder, you might end up in prison for an extra five or 10 years," he said. Worse yet, he said, defendants may have been sentenced to death because penalty-phase jurors didn't understand such legalese as "weighing aggravating against mitigating circumstances."
Claims of confusing or misunderstood jury instructions are a recurring issue in criminal appeals, and occasionally prompt a court to overturn a conviction. But Chief Justice Ronald George, who appointed the task force, said it's possible that the courts haven't caught all the errors and that innocent people are sitting in prison as a result.
He said the new system should help.
The revised instructions are "designed to make jury service more user- friendly ... and an incidental benefit will be that it will improve the process," George said in an interview. "I think you may have fewer hung juries. "
Tiersma, who acted as a linguistic expert on the task force, said he encouraged its members to use active verbs, positive rather than negative definitions ("people sometimes forget" rather than "innocent misrecollection is not uncommon''), and ordinary words in place of legal terms whenever possible (a witness "deliberately lied about something important" instead of being "willfully false in one material aspect of his or her testimony'').
Today's vote comes two years after the Judicial Council approved a revision of jury instructions for civil cases, the product of another George- appointed panel. Corrigan, who chaired the task force on criminal instructions, said achieving clarity was a challenging assignment in a state whose population varies widely in language skills as well as legal sophistication.
The legal principles contained in the jury instructions, she said, are "the glue that holds the society together. But they shouldn't be a mystery, and we shouldn't speak of them in mysterious ways."
Proposed changes
Examples of how jury instructions will change if the recommendations are adopted:
Current: "A witness who is willfully false in one material aspect of his or her testimony is to be distrusted in others.''
Proposed: "If you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something important, you should consider not believing anything that witness says.''
Current: "Innocent misrecollection is not uncommon.''
Proposed: "People sometimes honestly forget things or make mistakes about what they remember.''
Current: "The law does not undertake to measure in units of time the length of the period during which the thought must be pondered before it can ripen into an intent to kill which is truly deliberate and premeditated.''
Proposed: "The length of time the person spends considering whether to kill does not alone determine whether the killing is deliberate and premeditated.''
Current: "A cold, calculated judgment and decision may be arrived at in a short period of time, but a mere unconsidered and rash impulse, even though it includes an intent to kill, is not deliberation and premeditation as will fix an unlawful killing as murder of the first degree.''
Proposed: "A decision to kill made rashly, impulsively or without careful consideration of the choice and its consequences is not deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, a cold, calculated decision to kill can be reached quickly.''
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
Page B - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/26/BAG46ED67D1.DTL
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
Jury instructions made simple
Panel to vote today on 700 newly worded judge's directives
- Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, August 26, 2005
For decades, jurors in California have had to ponder mind-numbing instructions from the judge like this: "Circumstantial evidence is evidence that, if found to be true, proves a fact from which an inference of the existence of another fact may be drawn."
It's enough to cause even the keenest juror to furrow a brow in hopes of comprehending the nearly incomprehensible. But now relief appears to be in sight.
The state Judicial Council -- composed mostly of lawyers and judges -- is scheduled to vote today on nearly 700 newly worded jury instructions. Passage is a virtual certainty, which means that come January, judges will be talking in language everyone who speaks English can understand.
For example, the definition of circumstantial evidence will come with an illustration that goes something like this: If a witness saw someone come inside wearing a raincoat covered with drops of water, that's circumstantial evidence that it might be raining.
It's all part of an eight-year project to make instructions -- the orders judges give before sending jurors into their deliberations -- understandable to people who may have had no other contact with the court system.
"We say to jurors that there are rules that govern how you must decide, and then we do it in the least efficient way, by reading it to them, and in language that is very challenging to understand," said Carol Corrigan, a state appeals court justice in San Francisco and chairwoman of the 29-member task force that drafted the new instructions.
Instructions contain the legal rules jurors are supposed to apply as they work toward a verdict. In a criminal trial, the judge describes what the prosecutor must prove for a conviction, sets boundaries for defense claims such as self-defense and mental impairment, outlines the burden of proof for each side, and tells jurors what they can consider in evaluating witnesses and evidence.
Before the 1930s, individual judges in California formulated their own instructions to juries. But then a committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court began drafting statewide instructions, taking the language from the text of the laws and court rulings defining them. The instructions have been updated periodically, but they remain confusing for lay jurors, as the task force assigned to come up with the new, streamlined instructions found.
"California Supreme Court rulings and the Penal Code, especially, were not written to be understood by an audience of ordinary people," observed task force member Peter Tiersma, a linguist and law professor at Loyola University in Los Angeles.
Corrigan's favorite tale of misunderstanding was relayed to her by another judge, who -- as the law allows -- merely read his instructions to the jury without providing written copies.
The case was a murder trial in which jurors had to decide whether the defendant killed his victim with "malice," which has a complex definition involving an intentional act performed with conscious disregard for human life. After a couple of days of deliberations, Corrigan said, the jurors approached the judge in bewilderment, pointed out that the trial involved a fatal shooting, and asked, "What's this mallet you keep talking about?"
In that case, the judge presumably was able to clear up the confusion. But jurors may not always realize they've misunderstood an instruction, and judges, fearful that a creative answer could be grounds for appeal, may not always be helpful; Corrigan said a common response by judges who are asked for clarification is to "read the same instruction, only louder and slower."
Tiersma said it's possible that defendants have been wrongfully convicted because of misconstrued jury instructions.
"If the jury doesn't understand the difference between first- and second- degree murder, you might end up in prison for an extra five or 10 years," he said. Worse yet, he said, defendants may have been sentenced to death because penalty-phase jurors didn't understand such legalese as "weighing aggravating against mitigating circumstances."
Claims of confusing or misunderstood jury instructions are a recurring issue in criminal appeals, and occasionally prompt a court to overturn a conviction. But Chief Justice Ronald George, who appointed the task force, said it's possible that the courts haven't caught all the errors and that innocent people are sitting in prison as a result.
He said the new system should help.
The revised instructions are "designed to make jury service more user- friendly ... and an incidental benefit will be that it will improve the process," George said in an interview. "I think you may have fewer hung juries. "
Tiersma, who acted as a linguistic expert on the task force, said he encouraged its members to use active verbs, positive rather than negative definitions ("people sometimes forget" rather than "innocent misrecollection is not uncommon''), and ordinary words in place of legal terms whenever possible (a witness "deliberately lied about something important" instead of being "willfully false in one material aspect of his or her testimony'').
Today's vote comes two years after the Judicial Council approved a revision of jury instructions for civil cases, the product of another George- appointed panel. Corrigan, who chaired the task force on criminal instructions, said achieving clarity was a challenging assignment in a state whose population varies widely in language skills as well as legal sophistication.
The legal principles contained in the jury instructions, she said, are "the glue that holds the society together. But they shouldn't be a mystery, and we shouldn't speak of them in mysterious ways."
Proposed changes
Examples of how jury instructions will change if the recommendations are adopted:
Current: "A witness who is willfully false in one material aspect of his or her testimony is to be distrusted in others.''
Proposed: "If you decide that a witness deliberately lied about something important, you should consider not believing anything that witness says.''
Current: "Innocent misrecollection is not uncommon.''
Proposed: "People sometimes honestly forget things or make mistakes about what they remember.''
Current: "The law does not undertake to measure in units of time the length of the period during which the thought must be pondered before it can ripen into an intent to kill which is truly deliberate and premeditated.''
Proposed: "The length of time the person spends considering whether to kill does not alone determine whether the killing is deliberate and premeditated.''
Current: "A cold, calculated judgment and decision may be arrived at in a short period of time, but a mere unconsidered and rash impulse, even though it includes an intent to kill, is not deliberation and premeditation as will fix an unlawful killing as murder of the first degree.''
Proposed: "A decision to kill made rashly, impulsively or without careful consideration of the choice and its consequences is not deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, a cold, calculated decision to kill can be reached quickly.''
E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.
Page B - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/26/BAG46ED67D1.DTL
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
posted by Professor Segal | 3:54 PM
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