In what circumstances will a jury not rely on "guesses" or "imagination" as evidence?

California, United States of America


The following excerpt is from The People v. Phongboupha, A122830, No. 201419 (Cal. App. 2010):

supplemented with definitions of "guesses" and "imagination" that the judge later explained were taken from the dictionary. The portion of the instruction telling the jury not to rely on guesses or imagination was consistent with case law, which states that in order to be "reasonable," inferences " 'may not be based on suspicion alone, or on imagination, speculation, supposition, surmise, conjecture, or guess work, ' " and that inferences must be " 'drawn from evidence rather than... a mere speculation as to probabilities without evidence. [Citation.]" (People v. Morris (1988) 46 Cal.3d 1, 21, overruled on other grounds in In re Sassounian (1995) 9 Cal.4th 535, 543-545 & fns. 5, 6.) For all of the foregoing reasons, we find no reversible error in the giving of the supplemental instruction.

The judgment is affirmed.

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