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Sample Fair Housing Jury Instructions—Preliminary

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS FORT SMITH DIVISION UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff, v. Civil No. 94-2094 GORMAN TOWERS APARTMENTS; GORMAN TOWERS, INC.; SAM SEXTON, JR.; DONNA SEXTON; SUE WATSON; POWELL SANDERS; JESS RILEY; SAM (CHIP) SEXTON III; RUTH WOLFE; and RENTAL MANAGEMENT COMPANY, Defendants. The plaintiff, United States of America, hereby submits its proposed jury instructions. P. K. HOLMES III UNITED STATES ATTORNEY By: Deborah J. Groom Assistant U. S. Attorney Arkansas Bar No. 80054 P.O. Box 1524 Fort Smith, AR 72902 501-783-5125 PLAINTIFF'S PROPOSED JURY INSTRUCTION NO. Ladies and gentlemen, I will take a few moments now to give you some initial instructions about this case and about your duties as jurors. At the end of the trial I will give you further instructions. I may also give you instructions during the trial. Unless I specifically tell you otherwise, all such instructions--both those I give you now and those I give you later--are equally binding on you and must be followed. The plaintiff in this action is the United States. The plaintiff's claim is that defendants violated Section 804(f)(3)(B) of the Fair Housing Act. This provision of the Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to refuse to make a reasonable accommodation in their rules, policies, practices, or services, when such an accommodation was necessary to afford an occupant equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling. The Fair Housing Act authorizes the United States, on behalf of aggrieved persons, to initiate actions in federal court to enforce it. The purpose of this federal law is to eliminate all traces of illegal discrimination from the housing market. The Act is aimed not only at handicap discrimination, but also at discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, sex, and familial status. The United States contends that Mr. Robert Gregory is a handicapped person. While Mrs. Helen Gregory, Mr. Gregory's mother, is not mobility impaired, I direct you to note that she was equally protected by the Fair Housing Act's prohibition against handicap discrimination because the Fair Housing Act also protects persons from handicap discrimination who are associated with a handicapped rental applicant. The United States contends that these defendants refused to provide the Gregorys with a handicapped parking space at Gorman Towers Apartments. The defendants deny that allegation. It will be your duty to decide from the evidence whether plaintiff is entitled to a verdict against the defendants. From the evidence you will decide what the facts are. You are entitled to consider that evidence in the light of your own observations and experiences in the affairs of life. You will then apply those facts to the law which I give you in these and in my other instructions, and in that way reach your verdict. You are the sole judges of the facts; but you must follow the law as stated in my instructions, whether you agree with it or not. In deciding what the facts are, you may have to decide what testimony you believe and what testimony you do not believe. You may believe all of what a witness says, or only part of it, or none of it. In deciding what testimony to believe, consider the witnesses' intelligence, their opportunity to have seen or heard the things they testify about, their memories, any motives they may have for testifying a certain way, their manner while testifying, whether they said something different at an earlier time, the general reasonableness of their testimony and the extent to which their testimony is consistent with other evidence that you believe. Do not allow sympathy or prejudice to influence you. The law demands of you a just verdict, unaffected by anything except the evidence, your common sense, and the law as I give it to you. You should not take anything I may say or do during the trial as indicating what I think of the evidence or what I think your verdict should be. Plaintiff's Instruction No. SOURCE: Manual of Model Civil Jury Instructions for the District Courts of the Eighth Circuit (1993 Edition) § 1.01. PLAINTIFF'S PROPOSED JURY INSTRUCTION NO. I have mentioned the word "evidence." "Evidence" includes the testimony of witnesses; documents and other things received as exhibits; any facts that have been stipulated--that is, formally agreed to by the parties; and any facts that have been judicially noticed--that is facts which I say you might accept as true. Certain things are not evidence. I will list those things for you now: Statements, arguments, questions and comments by lawyers are not evidence. Objections are not evidence. Lawyers have a right to object when they believe something is improper. You should not be influenced by the objection. If I sustain an objection to a question, you must ignore the question and must not try to guess what the answer might have been. Testimony that I strike from the record, or tell you to disregard, is not evidence and must not be considered. Anything you see or hear about this case outside the courtroom is not evidence, unless I specifically tell you otherwise during the trial. Furthermore, a particular item of evidence is sometimes received for a limited purpose only. That is, it can be used by you only for one particular purpose, and not for any other purpose. I shall tell you when that occurs, and instruct you on the purposes for which the item can and cannot be used. You should also pay particularly close attention to such an instruction, because it may not be available to you in writing later in the jury room. Finally, some of you may have heard the terms "direct evidence" and "circumstantial evidence." You are instructed that you should not be concerned with those terms, since the law makes no distinction between the weight to be given to direct and circumstantial evidence. Plaintiff's Instruction No. Source: Manual of Model Civil Jury Instructions for the District Courts of the Eighth Circuit (1993 Edition) § 1.02. PLAINTIFF'S PROPOSED JURY INSTRUCTION NO. As you have heard, there is a typewritten transcript of the tape recording I just mentioned. That transcript also undertakes to identify the speakers engaged in the conversation. You are permitted to have the transcript for the limited purpose of helping you follow the conversation as you listen to the tape recording, and also to help you identify the speakers. The transcript, however, is not evidence. You are specifically instructed that whether the transcript correctly or incorrectly reflects the conversation or the identity of the speakers is entirely for you to decide based upon what you have heard about the preparation of the transcript, and upon your own examination of the transcript in relation to what you hear on the tape recording. The tape recording itself is the primary evidence of its own contents. If you decide that the transcript is in any respect incorrect or unreliable, you should disregard it to that extent. Differences between what you hear in the recording and read in the transcript may be caused by such things as the inflection in a speaker's voice or by inaccuracies in the transcript. You should, therefore, rely on what you hear rather than what you read when there is a difference. Plaintiff's Instruction No. SOURCE: Manual of Model Civil Jury Instru ctions for the District Courts of the Eighth Circuit (1993 Edition) § 2.05 [cited in Civil Rights Resource Manual 60]