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Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Sometimes words are used in jury instructions that have a particular meaning -- in the context of that instruction or in the legal/courtroom context generally. The standard dictionary definition does not apply.

I can't think of a solid example off-hand, but I would guess that things like "intent" have a particular meaning, that is defined in some other instruction. That's probably not an issue here, on penalty phase. But things like "mitigating" or "aggravating" would be.

More generally, you never want a jury to be guided by anything other than what the judge tells them, and certainly not by anything that is not clearly on the record. There are any number of appellate cases concerning whether a judge gave the "correct" definition of a term, and that definition is not exactly what the dictionary says. If the jury looks to the dictionary instead, you don't even know what term they are looking up. And this creates an issue for appeal, which is the last thing the court wants to do (especially on a capital case).

I am assuming that the jury wants to look up a term that was used in the instructions. If the jury wants to look up a term that a witness or document used, that is also a problem. The evidence of what the witness meant when he used a particular word should come from the witness, not the dictionary.

"The jury considered x that was not part of the courtroom process" is an argument any criminal appellate lawyer wants to be able to make. If x relates to an instruction, even better -- it means that there is a good argument that the jury was guided by something other than "the law", as given to them by the judge.

OK. If they had a question about a word a witness used, would the witness be called back to the courtroom?