VA · jury_instructions
Va. Model Jury Instr. Civ. No. 2.020
Credibility of Witnesses
You are the judges of the facts, the credibility of the witnesses, and the weight of the evidence.
You may consider the appearance and manner of the witnesses on the stand, their intelligence,
their opportunity for knowing the truth and for having observed the things about which they
testified, their interest in the outcome of the case, their bias, and, if any have been shown, their
prior inconsistent statements, or whether they have knowingly testified untruthfully as to any
material fact in the case.
You may not arbitrarily disregard believable testimony of a witness. However, after you have
considered all the evidence in the case, then you may accept or discard all or part of the testimony
of a witness as you think proper.
You are entitled to use your common sense in judging any testimony. From these things and all
the other circumstances of the case, you may decide which witnesses are more believable and
weigh their testimony accordingly.
History
Virginia Model Jury Instructions – Civil, Release 26, April 2026. The unannotated set, posted by the Supreme Court of Virginia at vacourts.gov; the book states that it is made available with the permission of the publisher, Matthew Bender & Company, Inc.
Provenance
- Source
- vacourts.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-11
- Edition
- civ-2026-04-01
- Content hash
58f3c5d437347f80fd9085ffe9d7c4fe68f202780d70b394171916c1bde769f6
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