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Courts Move To Ban Juror Use of Net, Social Sites
coondoggie passes along a NetworkWorld report on the pronouncement of a judicial conference committee recommending that trial judges specifically instruct jurors not to use any electronic communications devices or sites during trial and deliberations. Here's the committee report (PDF). "If you think you're going to use your spanking new iPhone to entertain yourself next time you're on jury duty, think again. Judges are going to take an even dimmer view of jury member use of Blackberry, iPhone, or other electronic devices as a judicial policy-setting group has told district judges they should restrict jurors from using electronic technologies to research or communicate. ... The instructions state jurors must not use cell phones, e-mail, Blackberry, iPhone, text messaging, or on Twitter, or communicate through any blog or website, through any internet chat room, or by way of any other social networking websites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and YouTube."
How is this different than any other method of sequestering a jury? It makes perfect sense to me, human nature being what it is.
...what's next, a ban on pizza and yanking off?
Table-ized A.I.
This is surprising how?
Such use has resulted in mistrials, exclusion of jurors, and imposition of fines. ... The instructions state jurors must not [...] communicate through any blog or website, through any internet chat room, or by way of any other social networking websites, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Because we all know Facebook and YouTube are full of impartial people who know anything about case law.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I get the issue of sequestering a jury, but now, they're asking people to do without some pretty deeply ingrained habits. And for days, weeks at a time? I think we'll see an uptick in creative jury-avoidance strategies. I'm going to start working on mine right now!
Why do we accept the mind control brainwashing by the powers that be that an IGNORANT and UNINFORMED jury is a good jury? It's only a good jury from the point of view of the system and the prosecution where they control the information flow and where the judge denies informing the jury of their right to nullify the trial.
Specifically, those instruction spell out that jurors should not you should not consult dictionaries or reference materials, search the internet, websites, blogs, or use any other electronic tools to obtain information either before the trial, during deliberations or after until the judge instructs otherwise.
Okay, maybe if jurors were required to pass some type of basic test that indicates they have a reasonable understanding of basic terms this would make sense, but denying the use of dictionaries makes no sense at all. How in the world is a "normal" person supposed to know when the judge or attorney is trying to pull a fast one when they aren't even allowed to research what is being said?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Just as you're not allowed to record/tape an interview that lawyers hold with their clients (out of fear the truth may get out), you shouldn't be allowed to research all those lies from the lawyers in court either...
Well this is getting kind of out of hand. Why not just throw the jury in jail too? I mean you're taking away their freedoms already so why not do it right? At least in the end the jury gets out of jail... It would be good if the jury COULD use technology (email) but only on computers sanctioned and controlled (monitored) by the judicial service. That means "highly filtered" and/or reviewed by approved moderators of the court. If you are found breaking the rules, slap their pee pee's and throw them in jail too. At least jurors would be warned. What if I was on the jury of a long trial and I had to pay my bills online and no longer got my bill stubs the "paper way" but rather through email? Sorry - collection service for you...credit rating hell. How dumb is that?
I'm assuming they are talking about banning their use *during* trials, e.g. when the jurors are actually in the jury box or deliberating outside the courtroom. It seems a bit ridiculous to ban use of the devices when jurors are on their own time, outside the trial, at home, commuting, etc. In fact here in Finland it would be against the law to do so since access to the internet has recently been granted a right to all citizens.
I totally agree that such devices should not be allowed during the actual trial or when jury members are "performing their duty" as jurors. I can just image someone trying to sell their "story" to a disreputable publisher (tabloids) by reporting to the publisher, during a major trial.
xbox 360, connect to net, talk via in-game messaging. eat that, Johnny Law!
Or use yahoo instant messenger. IMs are not on the list.
But please pay me more than 15 dollars a day for my pain and suffering, not to mention people thinking I'm dead after not tweeting or updating facebook for more than 24 hrs!
I do wonder how this would affect the jury selection process though. This isn't *suppose* to have any influence at all I am sure, but what if more people who don't use the internet end up being jurors? Kind of like only pro-death penalty people being allowed on a capital case.
No wonder they get completely crap juries. $5 a day and completely cut off from the world?
Does it surprise anyone that 99.5% of the best and brightest are going to do their darndest to get out of it?
(The 0.5 remaining could be split up into 0.1 (the scrupulously dutiful), 0.3 (those with agendas to push), 0.2 (those who believe they can actually get away with jury nullification).
S.
Would you like jurors reading about you in some shitty tabloid? The press can hurt the innocent and guilty alike.
If they remake the movie "12 Angry Men" (like everything else these days), the story will be about 12 angry men who are kept locked up in a jury room with no access to their online porn.
politicians and advertising RELY on using vocabulary to sound good, and lie to your face.
People misunderstand them all the time. Its like a cable salesman getting you to sign a contract and telling you "don't worry, its not a contract". Right, its not a contract, it just means they take your money.
1. Swear you'll be fair and neutral.
2. If it's a criminal case, vote Not Guilty. Anybody asks you, just say, I didn't believe the evidence.
3. If it's a civil case, the defendant is really an insurance company, but you'll be told the defendant is Joe Average. Award the plaintiff lots of money! I'd do the same for you. Joe will never have to pay a dime out-of-pocket.
Unfortunately there'd be no way of enforcing these rules between days in trials. There have already been cases in the UK of jurors reaching verdicts on the basis of subjective internet comments about the accused.
I know about the artificial separation of judges deciding law and jurors deciding fact, but forget that for a moment.
Jurors are presumably supposed to use their judgment to decide the facts -- are the witnesses trustworthy, is their testimony full of inconsistencies, how do different witness's testimonies stack up against each other ...
But all this REQUIRES that jurors use their own knowledge to some extent. If a witness says something that is obviously wrong to a car mechanic but not an ice cream clerk, that mechanic darned well better tell the other jurors why he thinks the witness is lying. Jurors are expected to NOT drop their real-world knowledge at the door. (I am particularly thinking of My Cousin Vinny, where only a car fanatic would know vital clues about the tire tracks and what kind of car could have made them.)
Now how is this different from a juror who knows just enough to be wary of something and looks it up (NOT during the trial, but at home, or even during deliberations)? It's all fine and dandy to say that is up to the opposing lawyer to handle, that jurors are not police or investigators, but that is word games. If I knew something before the trial, I am expected to use that knowledge to uncover bad testimony. But if I acquire that knowledge during the trial, I am supposed to pretend I don't know that a witness is lying?
Maybe a case can be made for looking up a witness's past history, but even then I don't think so. If I knew a witness personally before the trial, knew he had a history of lying, knew he hated the defendant or was jealous of him or was in love with him, whatever kind of influence you can think of, that is part of my knowledge and part of how I decide what is true and what is false. Even if the only reputation they have is from always appearing in newspapers under unsavory conditions, I am not expected to forget all that when evaluating their testimony. And yes, I am ignoring the idea that prior criminal history is not supposed to be part of a defendant's current trial, but I also think that is bunk -- if some guy has been to jail a half dozen times for beating people up, that sure as heck is significant.
This all stems from olden times when jurors had no way of looking things up, and very little need. But the world is more complicated now, people know more and get around more, and I'd rather be tried by jurors who knew how to look up things for themselves rather than sit around like stupified monkeys.
Infuriate left and right
If it were not possible to do illegal things then you wouldn't have been summoned for jury duty.
It is most certainly possible to get fired because you missed work for jury duty. Sure you can try to sue your employer about it afterwards, but in the meantime you may have lost your house to foreclosure which is not something the next judge is likely to un-do.
The summary here contains a pullquote that has been specifically edited in a misleading way to turn what is basically a non-story into a story.
The summary says:
Pay close attention to the ellipses after "communicate".
This quote appears to be from the committee report, but the committee report link is broken; it contains no href, just anchor tags.
The article says:
Not convinced yet? Here is the complete first paragraph from the committee report mentioned, but NOT linked to, in the quote contained in the summary:
Emphasis is mine in previous two quotations. In other words, you are not banned from using these devices or services. The article mentions that you may not use these things to discuss or research the case. The networkworld article uses the inflammatory word "ban" in its headline (inappropriately) and the Slashdot post goes even further, deliberately eliminating context crucial to understanding the actual guidelines and replacing them with ellipses.
people thinking I'm dead after not tweeting or updating facebook for more than 24 hrs!
Perhaps jury duty works differently where you are. The last time I was called in, I received notice several weeks beforehand. Ultimately I only went two days for a couple hours each day. I'm quite sure nobody thought I died in that time frame.
Furthermore this may actually only apply to jurors who are drawn for the trial (as opposed to alternates or extras), once the trial has begun. I would be surprised if more than a handful of people per year ended up being disconnected for more than 2 days.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"I can't imagine call phones or networked computers are allowed for a sequestered jury anyway"
Neither can I. ???!
on Slashdot?
Best Slashdot Co
In this part of England there are lots of dykes, the black dyke band, Hag Dyke, which is now a scout hostel, car dyke mills, grimes dyke primary school to name just a few.
Check out the Supermax prisons in the US. The European Court of Human Rights barely allowed less restrictive conditions to be used for the Jackall (Big terrorist honcho from the 70s); Supermax prisons are effectively permanent solitary. Which does horrible things to the brain--effectively, it's torture by omission.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
The extra cost is irrelevant - the amount of money used is the same, it's just a question of where it comes from. With my suggestion, it could ultimately come through taxes, but it would be spread across the entire population. With your system, most people don't pay, except the unfortunate ones who are stung with massive losses. Which is fairer? Which would give better peace of mind for people?
That would be the movie "Twelve REALLY Angy Men".
In the movie, Juror number 8 demonstrates that one piece of the People's evidence [a distinctive switchblade knife] was not unique, by purchasing a copy of it while on a break. The electronic equivalent would probably be finding a picture [Amazon, ebay] and passing it around. This is much less dramatic than jabbing the duplicate into the table.
Caution: Do not stare into laser with remaining eye.
They need to pay a lot more and have free food, parking , pay for train / bus fair / cabs.
also I don't think you can get fired if you are on a trial so make it so even if you are a contractor they can not void contract or say no to a renew of it.
Before you enter a court room in Massachuesetts, all the phones, et. al. are collected by the bailiff and returned to you when you leave.
Whew, good thing I'm taking an online class this semester. Guess that means I can't become a juror if this goes through :P
How is this not restricting your freedom of speech? You've been accused of no crime, yet you cannot use devices that you've paid for? The government has no right to block you from a third party network that you are paying for unless you've committed a crime.
"start operating the courts in English" as opposed to legalese that only superficially looks like English but has completely different non-obvious meanings for words that ordinary people use all the time. . . . It is the legal system that perverts those meanings.
It's really sad to see someone say that technical legal terms are somehow bad. You want the law to be simple? Fine. If you do something some people think is bad, the state kills you. Simple. No need for extenuating circumstances like self-defense, accident, etc. Death penalty for everything.
Just like any other complex field (think computer technology or some other typical Slashdotter field), legal terms often have a lot of nuance. They need to - they describe non-simple concepts.
If you want the jury to get it right, come up with a list of commonly misunderstood (for the courtroom meaning) words and make sure to spend some time educating the jurors.
Despite what you may think from TV, they actually DO that - they are called "jury instructions," which define terms and explain how they fit together. If something has a meaning other than what a layperson thinks, it is the JOB of the attorneys and/or judge to explain that to the jury. That's the whole point of having a trial: to give the jury the information needed on which to base a decision. It's not perfect, but it's the best system we've come up with so far. Like the myriad proposed solutions for spam tend to ignore reality, most alternatives to the jury system fail to understand basic human nature.
I would be much more likely to try to look it up myself instead of asking the judge to explain it. For one thing, even the friendliest of judges is very intimidating, just because he is a judge and you are in his courtroom, whether you're the one on trial or not.
Looking up words on your own is a very bad idea. Would you want your technophobe relative setting up your own systems by reading articles on USAToday? Don't try to become the attorney or judge by looking up a term on "teh intrawebs."
IAAL, but not yours. Hopefully if you ever need one, you'll get a good one that does his/her job and makes sure the jury knows what it needs to give you justice (although if justice would be bad for you, I suppose my "hopes" wouldn't be yours *grin* ).
Lose essential liberties to get temporary safety = get only hassles and security theater.
Thank god for my ponytail. It's a Get Out of Jury Duty Free card. No prosecutor wants a long-haired, unmarried engineer with no kids on his jury. Apparently we ask "why not" too often and have unreasonably high standards of evidence, plus it's harder to move us with the old "Won't somebody please think of the children!" line. Fine by me.