§ 8.06 Effectiveness of Limiting Instructions

• Jurisdiction: United States

§ 8.06 Effectiveness of Limiting Instructions

Like most courts, the Supreme Court has assumed, almost as an article of faith, that jurors follow instructions. The Court has written that a "crucial assumption underlying the criminal trial system is that juries will follow the instructions given them by the trial judge. Were this not so, it would be pointless for a trial court to instruct a jury, and even more pointless for an appellate court to reverse a criminal conviction because the jury was improperly instructed."⁴⁶ On occasion, however, judicial disquiet surfaces. For example, Justice Jackson once commented: "The naive assumption that prejudicial effects can be overcome by instructions to the jury, all practicing lawyers know to be unmitigated fiction."⁴⁷ Another judge stated it more colorfully: "[I]f you throw a skunk into the jury box, you can't instruct the jury not to smell it."⁴⁸

As noted above, the Court's decision in Bruton turns on the Court's acknowledgment that "the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is so great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the defendant, that the practical and human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored."⁴⁹ Bruton is one of the few instances where the Court rejected the maxim that juries follow instructions.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most studies on the topic question the effectiveness of limiting instructions.⁵⁰ A leading text on the subject puts it this way: "The overwhelming conclusions from empirical research on the ability (or willingness) of jurors to follow instructions to use evidence for a limited purpose is like that for disregarding evidence—instructions fail to accomplish their purpose and can even backfire, making the forbidden use more influential than had no instruction been given."⁵¹

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Notes:

^[46] Parker v. Randolph, 442 U.S. 62, 73 (1979).

^[47] Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 453 (1949) (concurring). Another example is Shepard v. United States, 290 U.S. 96 (1933), in which the prosecution argued on appeal that a murder victim's statement ("Dr. Shepard has poisoned me") was admissible for a nonhearsay purpose and not for the truth of the assertion. In rejecting this argument, Justice Cardozo responded: "Discrimination so subtle is a feat beyond the compass of ordinary minds. The reverberating clang of those accusatory words would drown all weaker sounds. It is for ordinary minds, and not for psychoanalysts, that our rules of evidence are...