MA · jury_instructions
Instruction 2.140, Criminal Model Jury Instructions for Use in the District Court
Function of counsel
FUNCTION OF COUNSEL
It was the duty of both lawyers in this case to object when the other
side offered evidence which that lawyer believed was not admissible under
our rules of evidence. They also had an obligation to ask to speak to me at
the judge’s bench about questions of law, which the law requires me to rule
on out of your hearing.
The purpose of such objections and rulings is not to keep relevant
information from you. Just the opposite: they are to make sure that what
you hear is relevant to this case, and that the evidence is presented in a
way that gives you a fair opportunity to evaluate its worth.
You should not draw any inference, favorable or unfavorable, to either
attorney or his (her) client for objecting to proposed evidence or asking me
to make such rulings. That is the function and responsibility of the
attorneys here.
The model instruction is adapted in part from L.B. Sand, J.S. Siffert, W.P. Loughlin and S.A. Reiss,
Modern Federal Jury Instructions §§ 2-10 and 2-9 (1985).
History
Instruction 2.140, 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/2140-function-of-counsel/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
7556c008e5a02f3cf4ee416b3465c45d8e8f19d797589bfca8eedab273e94737
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