Tag Archives: Pattern Instructions Not Sacrosanct


Judge’s Duty to Draft and Give Instructions Not Included in CALCRIM
May 3rd, 2022

In People v. Pettigrew (2021) 62 Cal.App.5th 477, 500 the judge erroneously instructed the jurors that they could consider the defendant’s attempted suicide as flight per CC 372. Instead, because no CC instructions addressed the issue of attempted suicide vis-a-vis consciousness of guilt the judge (or prosecutor who had presented the attempted suicide evidence and […]


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CALCRIM Is Not The Law And Is Not Sacrosanct
January 27th, 2015

  “Jury instructions are only judge-made attempts to recast the words of statutes and the elements of crimes into words in terms comprehensible to the lay person. The texts of standard jury instructions are not debated and hammered out by legislators, but by ad hoc committees of lawyers and judges. Jury instructions do not come […]


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