Here's a must-read piece by NY Times writer John Schwartz on jurors using Google and Twitter, with resulting mistrials. According to John's piece, last week one building products company in Arkansas asked a court there to overturn a judgement for nearly $13 million because a juror live-twittered the civil trial. Snip:
Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge's instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up (Thanks, John Schwartz, also spotted via @cshirky)Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, a waste of eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.
"We were stunned," said a defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he had been on the verge of winning the case. "It's the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head."
It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges.
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well of course this is going to happen. now that the deck is not so stacked against defendants the jury is going to start finding out how prosecutors lie, distort facts and misrepresent what happened to get convictions. the populace will now have a means to see through it or discover the truth for themselves. ask the jury in the cory maye trial, or the ed rosenthal trial, or the ryan frederick jury, just to name a few.
Daten, you make some good points, but you are focusing on criminal trials... (and forsaking capitalization or sentence structure for the sake of breathlessness!)
Read more carefully. The lawyer for the defense was told by the jury he had it in the bag. Now that a mistrial has been declared, the "deck might be stacked" worse in the next trial. If the jury had behaved, the defendant would have most likely been found not guilty.
Now, you could argue the jury sided with the defense based on their illicit research. Well, then I say if those hotshot defense attorneys are so good, why can't they do the same quality of research and present it in court? Google too hard to use?
More than likely, the jury was swayed by some kind of rumor or biased misinformation... The mass media never fails to get suckered (even BB has fallen for a few!) There is a very good reason judges can rule evidence as inadmissible.
That is why you sequester a jury in a really big trial. That is why even so much as a cell phone means they aren't. If you really want to prevent the jury from being influenced, you pretty much have to put them in jail.
My real concern is the civil trial that was torpedoed by a juror LIVEBLOGGING it? I thought there was careful screening of items brought into the courtroom. Why was a juror allowed to even have personal electronics while in the courthouse?
I assumed the only reason this has never come up before was because jurors were always asked to give up cell phones, and other bits of communication technology before the trial begins.
I'm astonished that it had never occurred to them before.
@1: I've only got one thing to say to you, really:
Stuff you find on the Internet ≠ admissable evidence.
Greetings
Ramsey Country District Courtin MN was clear on this a while ago, when I was on jury duty they confiscated cell phones and did not allow any jurors ro have computers, blackberrys phones etc that were connected to outside in the jury room and they were expressly forbidden in courtroom under threat of arrest for contempt of court.
They had a cell phone mistrial where juror called while sequestered, they fined charged juror court costs for cancelled trial
The last time I was called for jury duty in Middlesex County, MA, all cellphones and other electronic devices, like cameras and PDAs were held safely by the bailiffs, and that was just for jury instruction and selection! I can't imagine that they would be allowed for a sequestered jury UNLESS the jury members were excessively warned that using non-trial information from whatever source was expressively prohibited. Better to just take away the temptation, if you ask me.
SO, suppose a juror actually happens to know a fact without having to look it up? Is the juror allowed to consider that knowledge or not?
Basically these days the difference between what one remembers and what one can look up in two seconds is a very thin line. Tomorrow that line may be thinner, what to do then?
Maybe jury trials as we now know them need to be replaced with something else. I'm not sure what yet, let me get back to you on that one.
The last time I was a juror, one of my fellow jurors who pleaded to not be put on a trial because he was an on-call IT guy, texted all through the trial on his blackberry. No one either noticed or cared.
In addition to the fact that information on the internet generally isn't reliable, the prosecution doesn't have the ability to respond to arguments it doesn't know about.
One way to get kicked out of court... just blurt out "Judge Smith, I just googled you!"
I'd trust what I found myself on the web over anything any lawyer says in a court room.
#7 posted by Anonymous
SO, suppose a juror actually happens to know a fact without having to look it up? Is the juror allowed to consider that knowledge or not?
Basically these days the difference between what one remembers and what one can look up in two seconds is a very thin line. Tomorrow that line may be thinner, what to do then?
Maybe jury trials as we now know them need to be replaced with something else. I'm not sure what yet, let me get back to you on that one.
I think the facts they're not allowed to look up would be things specific to the trial, like if a newspaper had written about evidence that was found in a warrantless search. Prospective jurors are screened before the trial to make sure they don't have prior knowledge of the case or connections to the litigants. Depending on which side of the case they're arguing for, lawyers might actually prefer jurors with some knowledge of the pertinent laws or issues involved. Of course, banning cellphones in the courtroom doesn't affect what jurors can do once they leave; we just have to trust that they are conforming to the oath they take upon becoming a juror. The technology involved here doesn't seem to change that basic fact and, I think, this might be an aberrant situation that suggests a flaw in the screening process.
If you take away a person's ability to communicate at all with the outside world while on trial, and if that trial lasts for several months, is that not imprisonment?
Jeez, where I live, they slap your sunglasses off your head when you walk into the jury room. You wouldn't make it anywhere near a courtroom with electronics.
Courts take prior knowledge very seriously. That's why they don't let lawyers serve on juries.