Jury Charge Dictation and Transcription
What the domain tests
Jury-charge dictation requires exact reproduction of instructions the judge will read and the jury will take into the deliberation room. In Missouri, civil and criminal charges are commonly built from the Missouri Approved Instructions (MAI-CIV and MAI-CR), so the reporter must capture instruction numbers, statutory citations, defined terms, verdict directors, and damage paragraphs with no paraphrase.
Core rules
- Treat the charge as a legal document: preserve 'shall,' 'may,' 'must,' 'not,' and all numerical designations exactly.
- Follow the judge's paragraphing and numbering; keep separate numbered instructions on separate paragraphs.
- Capitalize 'Court' only when it is part of a formal title or the judge is being addressed; use 'court' generically.
- Punctuate conditional instructions as complete sentences: 'If you find ..., then you must ...'
- Capture verdict forms and damage amounts separately; do not merge a verdict form into the body of an instruction.
- Mark bench conferences, objections, and sidebars with the required parenthetical and keep the charge text clean.
Worked example
Dictated: 'If you find the issues in favor of plaintiff, then you must award plaintiff such sum as you believe will fairly and justly compensate plaintiff for any damages you believe plaintiff sustained.' Reasoning: The sentence is a single conditional with a comma after the introductory 'If' clause. 'Plaintiff' is a party designation, not a proper name, so it is not capitalized in Missouri practice unless the court's style requires it. 'Then' introduces the consequence; do not replace it with 'therefore.' The repeated 'plaintiff' must be preserved even though it sounds redundant.
Traps
- Dropping 'not' in a verdict director or 'not guilty' in a criminal charge.
- Converting 'shall' to 'will' or 'may' because the sentence sounds smoother.
- Missing MAI numbers or section symbols.
- Combining a verdict form with the instruction that introduces it.