MA · jury_instructions
Instruction 3.660, Criminal Model Jury Instructions for Use in the District Court
First complaint
FIRST COMPLAINT
The jury should be instructed on the limited use of such evidence both when it is admitted and again
during final instructions. Commonwealth v. King, 445 Mass. 217, 248 (2005).
The alleged victim is also known as the “complainant.” In sexual
assault cases the law allows testimony by one person whom the
complainant told of the alleged assault. We call this “first complaint”
evidence. The complainant may have reported the alleged sexual assault
to more than one person. However, our rules normally permit testimony
only as to the complainant’s first report.
(The next witness will testify) (During this case you heard a witness
testify) about the complainant’s “first complaint.” You may consider this
evidence only for specific limited purposes: first, to establish the
circumstances in which the complainant first reported the alleged offense,
and then to determine whether that first complaint either supports or fails
to support the complainant’s own testimony about the crime.
You may not consider this testimony as evidence that the assault in
fact occurred. The purpose of this “first complaint” evidence is to assist
you in your assessment of the credibility and reliability of the
complainant’s testimony here in court.
In assessing whether this “first complaint” evidence supports or
detracts from the complainant’s credibility or reliability, you may consider
all the circumstances in which the first complaint was made. The length of
time between the alleged crime and the report of the complainant to this
witness is one factor you may consider in evaluating the complainant’s
testimony, but you may also consider that sexual assault complainants
may delay reporting the crime for a variety of reasons.
Commonwealth v. King, 445 Mass. 217, 247-48 (2005), cert. denied, 546 U.S. 1216 (2006).
SUPPLEMENTAL INSTRUCTION
W hen non-sexual crime also charged. You may consider any such
statements made after the incident only to corroborate the
complainant’s present testimony about the alleged sexual
assault. They are not relevant to the alleged [non-sexual offense]
at all, and you may not consider them in evaluating the alleged
victim’s testimony about that alleged offense.
History
Instruction 3.660, Criminal Model Jury Instructions for Use in the District Court (Revised March 2017). 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/3660-first-complaint/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
697781ca8464e9824da1d7bd3d90d778f74ce4139cd2c56ef7395946a636e68d
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