MA · jury_instructions
Instruction 3.780, Criminal Model Jury Instructions for Use in the District Court
Prior trial
PRIOR TRIAL
During the course of this trial, you have heard that the defendant was
on trial before. That is true. The defendant and the Commonwealth are
entitled, however, to have you decide this case entirely on the evidence
that has come before you in this trial. You should not consider the fact that
there was a previous trial in any way when you decide whether the
Commonwealth has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant
committed (this offense) (these offenses).
This instruction is drawn from Federal Judicial Center, Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions § 14 (1983
ed.)
History
Instruction 3.780, 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/3780-prior-trial/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
11c1f0970dd1e1ae2cf1dcc77fdd6d15b1b0307348c9e10030e36b7f85dec585
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.