Federal Judiciary

MORE PROSE, LESS POETRY
By Mark Thompson
markthomp@yahoo.com
Posted 06-25-08

New York County Justice Edward J. McLaughlin imperiled yet another criminal case, the Appellate Division ruled last week, because he laid down the law to the jury with a poetic flourish of his own rather than hewing to the boring, standardized jury instructions.

The defendants, Terrain Dandridge and Renata Hill, faced the possibility of an enhanced sentence under the gang-assault statute based on the serious injuries inflicted on the victim by others in the group they were with, and thus, the case hinged on the issue of accessorial liability. To win a conviction under that statute, prosecutors must prove that the defendant “did an act intending in some fashion to carry out the common purpose,” the Appellate Division said. In explaining that concept to jurors, McLaughlin, as has happened before, did not read the standard jury instruction on when an accessory may be liable for a crime but instead “provided an analogy to an orchestra, stating that every member of the orchestra, whether the conductor or the person who makes a ‘ting’ on a triangle, was acting ‘in concert’,” the appellate panel said. McLaughlin concluded that any member who makes so much as a ting is “in it. You're in it. I'm not going to refer to the pregnancy thing, but you're either pregnant or you're not. You are either involved or you're not.”
 

Full post as published by Judicial Reports on June 25, 2008 (boomark / email).