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Lawyer Demands Jury Stops Googling
coomaria noted an unsurprising story about how courts are having problems with jurors Googling during cases. As anyone who has ever been called for jury duty knows, you aren't allowed to get outside information about the case you are hearing, but apparently the iPhone makes it far too easy to ignore this advice. A lawyer is trying to get jurors to sign a form explicitly stating they won't "use 'personal electronic and media devices' to research or communicate about the case." Of course, I'm not exactly sure why a juror should need to sign something for your iPhone but not a newspaper.
"Not aloud"? "To easy"?
Is there an editor in the house?
End of lesson. You may press the button.
You're not supposed to read the newspaper either.
...then hearing the lawyers would be deafened, rendering justice blind.
IANAL, but my cousin is and her husband is a police officer, and one of her biggest complaints is that jurors are now expecting evidence to be collected and more importantly processed along the lines of the tv show CSI. Where DNA results are turned around in an hour and even bullets collected in the pouring rain can still be matched to a national gunpowder manufacturer database.
Bing!
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
If jurors search online for information about the case or the defendant, then it makes it harder to maintain the presumption of innocence.
For example, the media might report all sort of information about the case: the defendant had previously been seen hanging around the schoolyard, the defendant was "known to police", he was convicted of a similar crime 20 years before, etc.
Some of this information might be true, and some of it might not be true. If it's raised during the court case, then it can be rebutted by the other side. If it's just speculation printed in the media and found out by the jurors from their hotel room, the defence might not know what they have to rebut.
Of course .. this is going to get harder and harder as computers and the
internet become more and more pervasive.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
That's is why a jury is allowed to ask questions and ask for read back of testimony during jury deliberations. A juror might google segregation, read the first sentence or two, and think that Plessy v. Ferguson is still good law.
If you're ever on the defending end of a case, would you REALLY trust people to "inform themselves" about your case? From the internet, of all places? It's bad enough people watch CSI and end up in a jury box honestly thinking that's how forensic evidence really works.
We can't even trust people to "inform themselves" about national issues like health care reform - something that would actually effect their own lives, let alone make or break yours.
Confiscate the damn phones at the door.
On a lighter note: don't forget that with only a few exceptions, the ones who end up in a jury are the people too stupid to get out of it. :)
=Smidge=
The prosecution and defense have, for years, been trying to weed out intelligent, informed jurors especially ones that know the defendant or the victim. They claim it is necessary to keep out prejudice even while they do extremely unethical things like introducing the testimony of career criminals who have been given incentives to testilie (aka jailhouse snitches) and to keep information about the victim/plaintiff's behavior from the jury's ears lest the jury come to the conclusion that their behavior was so irresponsible that it mitigates the severity of what the defendant did.
"Googling"...?
"the iPhone makes it far to easy to ignore this advice"...?
Did the iPhone suddenly invent mobile internet access? Web access has been a standard feature of every cell phone and PDA sold in the world (certainly in Europe and Asia) since years before the iPhone even existed. And is Google now somehow the only way to contact other people or read news websites?
Can these articles at least be tagged with "productplacement" or possibly "fanboysummary"?
And anyway, sequestered jurors aren't allowed to keep cellphones, while non-sequestered jurors can even watch TV, so the whole point is nonsensical.
I think if you'd ever been on a jury you would know that trial attorneys typically dumb down arguments and presentations to a level that would shock most slashdotters (e.g., "if the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit.") IAAL and it's sad to reduce complex (and interesting) technical issues into baby talk so 8 unemployed people from the mall can pick a winner in a million dollar business dispute.
On a lighter note: don't forget that with only a few exceptions, the ones who end up in a jury are the people too stupid to get out of it. :)
I don't know why this is on a lighter note; this is a real problem. People on juries are people with a strong sense of social responsibility and people too stupid to get out of it. You can probably guess the ratio of the former to the latter. Given how important a functioning judiciary is to society, jury service really ought to be better rewarded, so competent people don't have such a strong incentive to get out of it.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Yes. That is also why jurors are not supposed to reach decisions on matters of law, only matters of fact. If the jury members need to understand the legalese someone is doing something wrong.
caritj.org
Well, it turns out that plain english is not always as precise as it needs to be for the formulation of laws and legal principles. Witness, for example, the amount of legal scholarship that has gone into figuring out how we ought to define words like "reasonable" and "intent."
Law is a profession, and like any other complicated and substantive profession it has its own vocabulary. In a well run courtroom, the legalese will be reserved for arguing points of law in front of the judge - points that the jury isn't supposed to be concerned with. Then, when trying to establish the actual facts of the case, a lawyer ought to speak in a way the jury understands. He fails to do this at his own peril.
Of course, there are a lot of crappy lawyers out there, so I'm sure juries often do get confused by issues that they are not supposed to be deciding in the first place. When this happens they should ask the judge for clarification.
Allowing juries to taint themselves by giving them internet access during deliberations is probably one of the worst possible solutions to this problem.
caritj.org
I hear a three-digit IQ is, in fact, a disqualifying condition.
Actually, based on my uninformed, mysanthropic and cynical view of the current generation, I figure it might have been more like:
Lawyer: "Mr Burns, can you tell us in your own words what... Err... Your honour, the jury is playing with their phones again instead of paying attention!"
Judge: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I remind you that you're supposed to pay attention? Someone's freedom is at stake here."
Jurror 1: "Sorry. I was paying attention."
Lawyer: "Your honour, please ask her what we were talking about."
Prosecution: "Objection!"
Judge: "Overruled. Mrs Smith, can you tell us what the last question to the witness was?"
Jurror 1: "I can has cheezburger? LOL!"
Witness: "Did she actually pronounce 'LOL'?"
Judge: "Silence, please. Ok, I see. Next member of the jury? Can you tell us what was being debated?"
Jurror 2: "Chewbacca defense?"
Lawyer: "What? Your honour, I must..."
Judge: "Silence, please! Next member of the jurry? You, please?"
Jurror 3: "Huh? What?"
Judge: "What are you using that phone for, anyway? I must remind you that you're not allowed to look up any other information about the case than that presented in this court."
Jurror 3: "Ah, nah, my girlfriend was sexting me her breasts. Sorry."
Jurror 2: "Me too."
Jurror 3: "I hope you mean your girlfriend."
Jurror 2: "Nah, yours."
Jurror 3: "Well, your mom was sexting me hers."
Jurror 2: "Dude, mom is dead..."
Jurror 4: "Geesh, guys, cut it out. I was cybering this hot chick and just wrote "your mom" by mistake. Crap."
Jurror 5 blushes and quickly folds his phone and shoves it in the pocket.
Jurror 4: "Crap, now she logged out."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yes. That is also why jurors are not supposed to reach decisions on matters of law, only matters of fact. If the jury members need to understand the legalese someone is doing something wrong.
Actually, Juries CAN decide the matters of law, it is just frowned upon. It is called Jury Nullification, where a jury, despite of the facts, simply ignores the law.
Honestly, a lot of our really bad laws can be and should be nullified by juries, and until we get widespread informed juries, bad laws will continue to be enforced.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Actually this is incorrect. Jurors are supposed to try the facts, AND, the law. Why? Because if the law is unjust, then it should not be upheld. You should research something called jury nullification. Here is a good place to start-- http://www.fija.org/
Libertas in infinitum
Ehh, sorta. From what research I've done, "jury nullification" is more a byproduct of the fact that "no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States" (7th Amendment) and the protection against being tried again for the same crime once you're found innocent (5th Amendment).
In other words, once a jury finds a person innocent it doesn't matter at all why they did it. Hell, they could all have been bribed and their decision would still stand (though they and the people who paid them may all be subject to prosecution themselves). In that sense, yes, "I don't approve of the law" is going to hold up.
The most recent court decisions on the matter basically go like this: Yes, you can do it, because we can't stop you. But yes, if anybody tells you that you can do it the judge can declare a mistrial. And yes, if the judge believes you're going to do it he can throw you off the jury pre-emptively (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification#United_States). Presumably, if you brought it up in the jury room and the judge found out he could also declare a mistrial at that point, though I've not seen any specific evidence for or against that assumption.
So, yeah, it exists, but I wouldn't agree with those who call it a right. It's a byproduct of our system that the courts really don't want you to have or to exercise, they just can't really stop you.