NY · jury_instructions
CJI2d[NY] Jury Role compared to Court Role
Role of Court and Jury
During these instructions, I will not summarize the evidence. If necessary, I may refer to portions of the evidence to explain the law that relates to it. My reference to evidence, or my failure to refer to evidence, expresses no opinion about the truthfulness, accuracy, or importance of any particular evidence. In fact, nothing I have said [and no questions I have asked] in the course of this trial (was/were) meant to suggest that I have an opinion about this case. If you have formed an impression that I do have an opinion, you must put it out of your mind and disregard it.
[The level of my voice or intonation may vary during these instructions. If I do that, it is done to help you understand these instructions. It is not done to communicate any opinion about the law or the facts of the case or of whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty.]
It is not my responsibility to judge the evidence here. It is yours. You and you alone are the judges of the facts, and you and you alone are responsible for deciding whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty.
History
Caption: Role of Court and Jury. Read from the committee's Word file. Prepared by the New York State Unified Court System Committee on Criminal Jury Instructions, Model Colloquies, and Evidence Rules; published by the Unified Court System at nycourts.gov (the internet edition is the only current and official publication of CJI2d).
Provenance
- Source
- nycourts.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-25
- Edition
- 2026-09-25
- Content hash
8270fda6487af5553d5ed8b2674d58e525ef54ce48aff001788f8ff59251ddcb
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.