United States v. James Rufus Davis

How courts have described this case

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

• holding that a definition of reasonable doubt instructing jurors that they should be able to give reasons for their doubts, while “perhaps unwise” and “not approved,” was “not erroneous”
• observing that although some of its “decisions ... have held that the instruction here given is ‘not approved’ and ‘perhaps unwise’ ... [the instruction] is ‘not erroneous.’ ”
• rejecting habeas challenge to such an instruction on authority of United States v. Davis
• definition of “reasonable doubt” as one for which “you can give a reason” “seems to put the point to jurors rather more intelligibly than the usual instruction”
• “one for which, when asked what it is by a fellow juror, ‘you can give a reason, then that indicates that it is a reasonable doubt’ ”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).