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2.1-3 Duty to Decide on the Evidence
Revised to January 1, 2008
You are to determine what the facts
are by careful consideration of all the evidence presented and based solely upon
the evidence, giving to each part of the evidence the weight you consider it
deserves in reaching your ultimate conclusion. When I say evidence, I include
the following:
<List those applicable>
-
testimony by
witnesses in court, including what you may have observed in any demonstrations
they presented during their testimony;
-
testimony by
witnesses by way of the reading of transcripts or the showing of videotapes;
-
exhibits that have
been received into evidence as full exhibits, including any pictures or
documents that are full exhibits;
-
your observations
at the viewing of the scene;
-
facts that the
parties have stipulated to;
-
facts that I have
told you are to be taken as true by judicial notice;
-
facts admitted as
true in pleadings;
-
facts admitted in
response to requests to admit.
The testimonial evidence includes both
what was said on direct examination and what was said on cross examination,
without regard to which party called the witness.
There are a number of things that may
have been seen or heard during the trial which are not evidence and which you
cannot rely on as evidence in deciding whether a party has proven a claim or a
defense. For example, <use as applicable:>
-
the statements made
by lawyers, including statements made both in their opening statements and in
their closing arguments are not evidence;
-
a question is not
evidence; it is the answer, not the question or the assumption made in the
question, that is evidence;
-
the fact that a
party has filed a claim or a defense in the court is not evidence that proves
the claim or the defense is true;
-
testimony or
exhibits that were offered but refused or stricken by me or that I told you to
disregard must not be relied upon as evidence in resolving the case;
-
testimony or
exhibits that I told you were to be used only for a particular purpose are not
evidence for any other issue;
-
exhibits marked for
identification that were not received in evidence as full exhibits are not
evidence.
Your duty is to decide the case based
on what has been admitted into evidence in this courtroom only, and not on any
information about the issues that was not presented into evidence in this
courtroom.
It's my right to make comments to you
on the evidence, but where I do that, such comments are merely to suggest to you
what point of law or what controversy I am speaking about. If I refer to
certain facts or certain evidence in the case, do not assume that I mean to
emphasize those facts or that evidence and do not limit your consideration to
the things that I may have mentioned. Likewise, you should attach no importance
to it if I should mention one party more than the other. If I should overlook
any evidence in the case, you'll supply it from your own recollection; if I
incorrectly state anything about the evidence in relation to what you remember,
you should apply your own recollection and correct my error. In the same way,
what any of the lawyers may have said in their respective summaries to you as to
the facts or evidence in the case should have weight with you only if their
recollection agrees with your own; otherwise, it's your own recollection of the
facts and evidence which should have weight in your deliberations.
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