An article on Law.com last week (subscription required) talked about the State of California's ongoing bid to improve communication between court systems and jurors. California stands alone, at present, as the only state to completely revise instructions from scratch.
Attempts at clarifying and simplifying jury instructions have been slowly spreading across the country for the past 20 years. "Arizona, Hawaii, Iowa, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin," the article says, "have revised civil instructions to varying degrees."
A press release from the Ohio Supreme Court on Feb. 24, 2004, relayed its jury task force's proposal of several major reforms, including that "jurors are entitled to brief statements of a case" either by the court or counsel prior to the beginning of voir dire and interim summaries, especially in lengthy trials; and that "jurors were entitled to understand the proceedings in the courtroom and that 'plain English' should be used at trial and in jury instructions." A link to the recommendations is provided in that press release.
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