Jury Instructions

* Re “Say What, Your Honor?� Sept. 7: As American literacy continues to plummet, we find ourselves bombarded with “pictographs� rather than text on everything from stereo instructions to street signs, in order to accommodate the lowest common denominator. At restaurants we now just point at a picture of what we wish to order, while on the corner that glowing red hand on what used to be a “Don’t Walk� sign tips us off to the danger of cross traffic.

So now jurors can’t understand big words like “preponderance of the evidence�? Perhaps the proposed “simplified� jury instructions don’t go far enough. Maybe what is needed is to have the instructions delivered on a big-screen TV in an easy-to-grasp cartoon starring the Rugrats.

STEPHEN C. LEE

La Habra