United States v. Alberto Torres Velasquez

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• noting that while cases have approved of the “hesitate to act” language, “failure to use that language does not necessarily constitute reversible error”
• “Considering the instruction given as a whole, the use of the ‘firmly convinced’ language did not indicate to the jury that the prosecutor had a lesser burden than that implied by the use of the term ‘reasonable doubt’ standing alone.”
• “Considering the instruction given as a whole, the use of the ‘firmly convinced’ language did not indicate to the jury that the 17 prosecutor had a lesser burden than that implied by the use of the term ‘reasonable doubt’ standing alone.”
• approving “firmly convinced” language in reasonable doubt instruction
• reviewing reasonable doubt instruction de novo

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).