Norwood v. Vance
The issue: Whether the court was proper in withholding a jury instruction that told the jury to give deference to prison officials because the word "deference" was undefined. The court found this to be improper.
From the majority:
The district court declined to give the proposed instruction because the meaning of deference would not be "clear to a lay person." But "deference" is not Urdu or Klingon; it is a common English word.
The dissent, of course, took issue with this:
Here, the trial judge quite rightly concluded that to give an instruction that mixed legal standards and, in effect, told the jury to layer deference upon deference, was not appropriate — particularly when the judge had already given an entirely proper instruction on the topic. (I must, however, acknowledge that the majority is quite correct in intuiting that, unsurprisingly, there is no Klingon word for "deference." See generally Marc Okrand, THE KLINGON DICTIONARY (Star Trek 1992)).
So what's the point of this? I guess there is none. Just that Judges can be Star Trek fans too. In fact, there's a whole blog post to this subject: Judges Love Star Trek Too
The issue: Whether the court was proper in withholding a jury instruction that told the jury to give deference to prison officials because the word "deference" was undefined. The court found this to be improper.
From the majority:
The district court declined to give the proposed instruction because the meaning of deference would not be "clear to a lay person." But "deference" is not Urdu or Klingon; it is a common English word.
The dissent, of course, took issue with this:
Here, the trial judge quite rightly concluded that to give an instruction that mixed legal standards and, in effect, told the jury to layer deference upon deference, was not appropriate — particularly when the judge had already given an entirely proper instruction on the topic. (I must, however, acknowledge that the majority is quite correct in intuiting that, unsurprisingly, there is no Klingon word for "deference." See generally Marc Okrand, THE KLINGON DICTIONARY (Star Trek 1992)).
So what's the point of this? I guess there is none. Just that Judges can be Star Trek fans too. In fact, there's a whole blog post to this subject: Judges Love Star Trek Too
