Admonition to Jury Law and Legal Definition
The term ‘admonition to jury’ refers to formal verbal statement made during a trial by a judge to advise and caution the jury on their duty as jurors. A judge may admonish the jury on:
1. What they must do and how they must behave.
2. The admissibility or non admissibility of evidence.
3. What evidence they can use to make their decision.
4. How they can use that evidence to make a decision.
The following is an example of a case law on trial court’s admonition to jury:
In addition to instructing generally on the presumption of innocence and the government's burden of proof, the trial court gave the following admonition to the jury:
The defendant's possession of the recently stolen property does not shift the burden of proof. The government always has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt every essential element of the offense.
Before you may draw an inference from the defendant's unexplained or unsatisfactorily explained possession of the property, you first must find that the Government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt every essential element of the offense. [United States v. Carter, 522 F.2d 666, 683-684 (D.C. Cir. 1975)].
