Jury Instructions: What's not there can be just as important as what is there!
Posted on Aug 12, 2013 2:15pm PDT
In State v. Bradford, the prosecution failed to submit complete jury instructions to the grand jury concerning a felony embezzlement charge. On appeal, the Court of Appeals made it clear that the definitional instructions to some of the elements of embezzlement were required to be submitted to the grand jury. Since they were not, the denial of the Defendant's motion to dismiss was reversed. The Court recognized that the prosecutor has a duty to inform the grand jury of all of the essential elements of the offense.