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An Erroneous Jury Instruction Should Not Turn On The Content Of Jury Instructions

Decent Essays

In its brief, the government asserted that the question of whether the evidence is sufficient to sustain a conviction “does not turn on the content of jury instructions.” Rather, the sufficiency of the evidence standard is made with reference to an accurate understanding of the elements required for a conviction. As such, a conviction should be upheld if “any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.” At the federal level, these elements are defined by Congress, meaning that an erroneous jury instruction should have “no effect on sufficiency analysis.” Thus, the government contended that its failure to object to an erroneous jury instruction should not have any impact on whether the elements as defined by Congress supported a finding of guilt.

In support of this position, the government cited two decided decisions by the Court holding that the failure to object to a jury instruction is not controlling “for purposes of appellate review of the denial of a directed verdict or judgment notwithstanding the verdict.” Rather, the question of whether a party is entitled to a directed verdict “depends upon the sufficiency of the evidence up to that point in the trial,” not of the content of jury instructions, which are “outside the scope of that analysis.”

For these reasons, the government argued that Petitioner’s reliance on the law-of-the-case doctrine was misplaced. The government emphasized that Petitioner’s

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