Jury Instructions

These jury instructions address every crime regularly prosecuted in this jurisdiction. The first two pages list the topics of all of the 57 chapters, hot-linked to the individual chapters, which each have a table of contents showing all of the topics for which Model Instructions have been drafted at this time.
Suggestions on any of the Instructions will be greatly appreciated. In particular, those with experience in prosecutions involving false imprisonment (Inst. 4.01), burglary in the second degree (Inst. No. 10.05), conversion of government property (Inst. No. 15.03) and brandishing a deadly weapon (Inst. No. 19.01) are invited to offer improvements or supplemental instructions on those topics.
The Supreme Court has not reviewed or approved these Model Instructions, and therefore they are not prescribed or required. But we hope that these Model Instructions will be a convenience to both lawyers and judges – because they are clear and neutrally worded, and have informative “Practice Notes.”
You can help improve them by forwarding comments on any specific provisions.
The Committee hopes to review comments in January of 2021, and thus any suggestions received before the New Year would be particularly appreciated. It is the Committee’s plan to issue annual revisions of the Model Instructions, and to supplement the “Practice Notes” as case law is issued that affects the various crimes covered in these many chapters.

Please send all comments to the coordinator of the Committee, Professor Kent Sinclair:
[email protected]

Model Jury Instruction Notice (7-24-2020).pdf