MA · jury_instructions
Instruction 1.240, Criminal Model Jury Instructions for Use in the District Court
Separation of the jury
SEPARATION OF THE JURY
Until this case is submitted to you, you must not discuss it with
anyone, even with your fellow jurors. After it is submitted to you, you may
discuss it only in the jury room with your fellow jurors.
It is important that you keep an open mind and not decide any issue in
the case until the entire case has been submitted to you along with my
instructions as to the law.
Such an instruction should be given on any separation of the jury before the case is submitted for the
jury’s consideration. Commonwealth v. Benjamin, 369 Mass. 770, 772, 343 N.E.2d 402, 404 (1976).
See Commonwealth v. White, 147 Mass. 76, 80, 16 N.E. 707, 711 (1888); Jury Trial Manual for
Criminal Offenses Tried in the District Court § 2.62.
History
Instruction 1.240, Criminal Model Jury Instructions for Use in the District Court (2009 Edition). Published by the Administrative Office of the District Court, District Court Department of the Trial Court, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, on www.mass.gov. © 1988-2009 Administrative Office of the District Court; reproduced under its title-page permission ("You may freely reproduce or copy this work if you identify its source and any changes made to the original work"). Source: https://www.mass.gov/doc/1240-separation-of-the-jury/download. Changes made: the text is extracted from the published PDF (verified by three extraction engines); the running headers, page numbers and line layout are removed, and a closing NOTES section, where printed, is carried as the note.
Provenance
- Source
- mass.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-25
- Edition
- 2026-09-25
- Content hash
333bf11c97d65c7cbbccb91686f40209fcd597d29a2f6df771440e72e84631fd
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.