ostrich instruction
n.— «U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve on Thursday granted the government’s request for a controversial jury instruction known as “deliberate avoidance.” The standard, also called the “ostrich instruction,” offers the jury an alternative theory to find the men guilty of defrauding Hollinger shareholders. If the jurors don’t believe that Black and his cohorts intentionally committed an alleged theft of $60 million from Hollinger, they also can consider whether the defendants deliberately averted their eyes from the fraud going on within their ranks.» —“Federal prosecutors win key point in Black fraud trial” by Ameet Sachdev Chicago Tribune June 14, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...
In English, to wait until the cows come home, means you’ll wait a long time. In French, it’s attendre la semaine des quatre jeudis, literally, to “wait for a week of Thursdays.” This is part of a complete episode.
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