We've been considering wading into this for awhile now, and I wanted to solicit others' expeiences and suggestions. I'd be relying on the reasoning in Massie, Atkins, Murphy and Davy.

Why have to court do something poorly you should be able to do so much better.

Second look again at the mess created by Murphy, 44 SW3d 656 and Davy, 67 SW3d 382, and wonder if it is worth the chance of reversal.

Finally, ask your self again, wouldn't relying on the court to explain things to the jury be a really bad idea. Simplify, don't complicate.

Of course, just my opinion I could be wrong.

Anyone else have thoughts on the matter?

I agree with you, Clay. If it's not statutorily defined, it's asking for trouble to put it in the charge. And generally speaking, a decent prosecutor should be able to do a much better job at getting the definition of normal use across to the jury in voir dire and closing arguments than whatever confusing "compromise" definition your judge will inevitably give. Just not worth it.

Every time there's a definition on a term that makes perfectly good sense to most people, it insults the intelligence of the jurors and inevitably hurts the State.

I think the argument that even when we have "normal use" of our faculties (did you know if you leave out the "c" that spells "faulties"?) we are not perfect, so how much worse is it if we are even slightly impaired, communicates the message of normal use being every single mental and physical faculty we have, even on our worst possible day; the law doesn't anticipate perfect drivers, just non-impaired drivers. There doesn't need to be a legal definition for that.

Anyone remember when the court tried to define "reasonable doubt"? How did that work out?