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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Mark Rollins. I’m an attorney here in Washington, DC. I also practice in the State of Maryland. My primary area of practice is criminal law.
Today we’re going to be talking about jury instructions and how that applies to you. The jury instructions applies to you if you’re in trial or about to start trial or you’re prepping your case for trial. Remember, the judge or jury hears the facts of the case. If you have a bench trial, the judge would the facts of the case. If you have a jury trial, the jury would hear the facts of the case. The judge or jury takes the facts of the case, and they make a decision. That decision is based on what the law is. That’s all that the jury instructions is. It’s really just a condensed form of explaining the law to people.
The jury instructions that they give are simply telling the jury, “This is the law and you need to follow it based on the facts that you’ve heard,” and you would render a decision based on the law, the jury instructions and the facts that you heard. I’m going to show you, for example, if you were charged with assault, I’m going to face off the screen right now and go onto it.
I’m going to show you, this is an example from the Redbook and this is the instruction for assault. If you were charged with assault and the government would be required to prove these elements, beyond a reasonable doubt, in order for you to be convicted, and these are the instructions that would go to the jury or judge. In this case, this would only go to a judge because the penalty here is less than six months, 180 days and/or a $1,000 fine. Therefore, only a judge would hear this, but this instruction, the judge would be required to follow this instruction just like a jury would.
They would have to prove that the defendant made an attempt or effort with force of violence, to injure another person, that at the time she made the attempt or effort, that the apparent present ability to injure that person. The attempt was made voluntary and on purpose, not by mistake. The defendant’s conduct was not justified by the use of reasonable parental discipline. If those four elements were proven, then the person would be convicted of assault. When I say proven, I mean beyond a reasonable doubt.
Hopefully that explains to you just what the instruction is and how that instruction applies in your case. Let’s switch back to the main screen.
I’m back. That was a good example of how an assault case and how the jury instructions would apply to an assault case.
In DC, criminal lawyers use and almost all criminal lawyers have in their office, something called Redbook. You can see right here on the screen. It’s just a book, because it’s red, they call it the Redbook. It’s the jury instructions in DC. It is the law, the bible, what lawyers follow in criminal trials in DC, but you should realize that your lawyer can also ask that additional instructions be placed in it because the book is old and it’s updated regularly, but sometimes your lawyer may want to put a different instruction that is not necessarily in the Redbook.
He may ask for an instruction from a different state that has been progressive in one area of law. He may ask that that be placed in the jury instructions. The judge doesn’t have to agree and the prosecutor doesn’t have to agree, but you can at least make that request. Who knows, some judges may agree.
I hope that helps in explaining the jury instructions in DC. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact my office. I will be more than happy to discuss it with you. Thanks for watching and subscribe to our channel. Thanks.
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