MA · jury_instructions
Instruction 1.340, Criminal Model Jury Instructions for Use in the District Court
Preliminary identification instruction
PRELIMINARY / CONTEMPORANEOUS INSTRUCTION
Upon request by any party, the trial judge shall give the prelim inary/contem poraneous instruction
before opening statem ents or im m ediately before or after the testim ony of an identifying witness,
saving the full m odel instruction to be given at a later tim e during the trial. The instruction is set
forth at 473 Mass. 1051 (2015).
You may hear testimony from a witness who has identified the
defendant as the person who committed (or participated in) the alleged
crime(s). Where a witness has identified the defendant as the person who
committed (or participated in) the alleged crime(s), you should examine the
identification with care. As with any witness, you must determine the
credibility of the witness, that is, do you believe the witness is being
honest? Even if you are convinced that the witness believes his or her
identification is correct, you still must consider the possibility that the
witness made a mistake in the identification. A witness may honestly
believe he or she saw a person, but perceive or remember the event
inaccurately. You must decide whether the witness’s identification is not
only truthful, but accurate.
People have the ability to recognize others they have seen and to
accurately identify them at a later time, but research and experience have
shown that people sometimes make mistakes in identification. The mind
does not work like a video recorder. A person cannot just replay a mental
recording to remember what happened. Memory and perception are much
more complicated. Generally, memory is most accurate right after the
event and begins to fade soon thereafter. Many factors occurring while the
witness is observing the event may affect a witness’s ability to make an
accurate identification. Other factors occurring after observing the event
also may affect a witness’s memory of that event, and may alter that
memory without the witness realizing that his or her memory has been
affected. Later in the trial, I will discuss in more detail the factors that you
should consider in determining whether a witness’s identification is
accurate. Ultimately, you must determine whether or not the
Commonwealth has proved the charge(s), including the identity of the
person who committed (or participated in) the alleged crime(s), beyond a
reasonable doubt.
History
Instruction 1.340, Criminal Model Jury Instructions for Use in the District Court (Issued November 2015). 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/1340-preliminary-identification-instruction/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
21cc718ad1f7542d36b967fba788477416f65022dd7a7cfe2aaa5cdea66a8029
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