The jury retired with 98 pages of legal instructions on the law, including sections of the California legal code. These instructions on the law,from the judge, says the NYT, are written by lawyers and contain 'legalese'.
How does this work? Are there pre-printed standard texts for use in , say, all cases of theft, and on each principle of law of evidence on, say, hearsay, or is every set of instructions written anew for each case ?
Why is this done? Why not the judge giving them instructions on the relevant law, in plain English, and leaving legal texts and written instructions out of the jury room? I'd be horrified to think that any jury was retiring with extracts from
Archbold's Criminal Pleading and Practice , the criminal law 'bible', here
. A lot of them wouldn't understand the words, not being
that literate ('what's a preponderance?' ), a lot more would have problems with understanding concepts of hearsay or corroboration as written by lawyers, and a good many would have difficulty with words that have a legal meaning beyond the obvious (e.g 'malice' in law here does not necessarily mean quite the same as 'ill-feeling' which it might do to the layman )
We have to make do with the judge explaining the law, often in rather folksy language, as it applies to the evidential issues and the case before them. Occasionally this comes unstuck. Many years ago a judge in the course of explaining 'beyond reasonable doubt' said 'being sure , as sure as you would be in any really serious decision in your own lives, as getting married...' The Court of Appeal criticised that last bit, remarking that it was obvious the judge was a bachelor ! They could think of few serious decisions made on less available and admissible evidence, without emotion or bias
