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Judge Closes Online Access To Info On Civil Case
Ponca City, We love you writes "The Tulsa World reports that Judge Linda Morrissey has ordered online access to information about a civil case locked up on the court website for the duration of a retrial out of concern that jurors might access earlier trial information and be prejudiced. The first trial, which focused on a death amid allegations of negligent medical care, wound up in a mistrial because jurors did not reach a verdict. Lawyers involved in the second trial agreed to the order because they were concerned that jurors could be influenced by getting information from a record of events in a case filed in February 2007 that could be inadmissible as trial evidence. Morrissey routinely gives strong admonitions to jurors that they not search the Internet for information about a case being tried. But not everyone agrees with the judge's closing of court records. The lawyers involved in the trial 'don't represent the public's interest in those records,' says Joey Senat, an associate professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University who writes for FOI Oklahoma, adding that what might be convenient to trial participants does not outweigh 'the public's right or need to know.'"
online access to information about a civil case locked up on the court website for the duration of a retrial
Only for the duration of the retrial. Surely people have other things to lookup on the internet besides this case while this is being retried, don't they?
The judge is there to make sure all parties get a fair trial. In this case, that concern outweighs the need for public oversight of trial proceedings. It's not like the records are being expunged, afterall.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
...it's impossible to keep archives of old web pages, or for anyone to download and mirror content.
Now jurors are more likely to know that there's information out there that they're "not allowed" to read. Which is fine - as a juror I might do as I'm told to prevent my becoming prejudiced - unless I've just found out that the information has been hidden from everyone, in which case I might consider it my duty to read the information anyway.
i had jury duty a few years ago for a criminal drug case. we weren't supposed to look up any information on the internet about the case either. only use what we heard in the courtroom. even though this was a small time drug dealer.
i was curious and found that the NYPD has arrest records online. the guy on trial had 10 or so other cases against him at the same time including weapons possesion. can't remember if the cops found the weapons at the same time as the drugs, but it was a separate trial. of course i never told any of the other jurors and we ended up finding the guy not guilty even though i thought he was guilty. but based on the evidence presented at trial, he was not guilty.
this is how the american judicial system works. we have a constitution that says that evidence has to be gathered in accordance with the law otherwise it's tossed out
Joey Senat, an associate professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University who writes for FOI Oklahoma, adding that what might be convenient to trial participants does not outweigh 'the public's right or need to know.'"
Freedom of the press does not give the media free reign to interfere with other peoples rights, such as the right to a fair trial. The statement about the public's right or need to know is nothing but self-serving propaganda. Take your 15 minutes of fame, and go away.
Just another day in Paradise
As much as I personnally believe that criminals get off too easily from the crimes that they commit, I understand why the judge asked for this and why all judges should. The reason is so that people don't get railroaded or blamed for a crime that they potentially did not commit. If I stole a car regardless of the reason and I'm being blames in two other situations for stealing two other cars which puts me in three cases at once. Well since our laws dictact innocent until proven guilty. I'm am therefore entitled to a fair and unbiased trial. If the jurors of one trial knew of the other court case, they could presumably assume I'm guilty of the first and ignore any evidence to the contrary. If they don't know about the other cases and find me innocent which I might be then I've been fairly tried.
Now conversely, if you have a guy that is repeat offender of crimes and is in several trial simultaneously, the same still holds true. We must believe in our judicial system to handle things correctly. If the defense attornies are clever enough to take solid convicting evidence and make a juror doubt it, then we must hope that the jury pool works the truth out of the facts and comes to the correct conclusion.
Trust me when I say, you'll want those same protections for you if you should ever find yourself in the unfortunate situation of defending yourself at a trial.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
I can think of many cases off the top of my head where a jury SHOULD be prejudiced, irrespective of what the judge says. If a juror finds out that an "expert witness" has a history of sending people to prison on testimony that sounds like pure equine ejectus, they should regard the man as a pathological liar. Just look up "Stephen Hayne bit mark evidence" on Google for a really good, sleazy example (my all time favorite, though is the "forensics expert" who calculated by the angle of a gun shot wound that it took two shooters holding the same gun to pull it off).
The US has an adverserial justice system. In other words, if 1 side puts a sleazy dirtbag on the witness stand, it's the opposing council's job to show this during cross-examination.
And expert witnesses don't send anyone to prison, that's the job of the judge and jury.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
It all goes back to the fact that the defense, prosecution and judge want to mold the mind of the jury. The judge can't stand the idea that the jury might want to research what other judges say the law means, what the legal code actually says in raw text, what happened, etc.
The problem is, when it comes to legal interpretation incomplete understanding is dangerous. Look at the average slashdotter, who I would characterize as smarter and better-educated than the average American juror, yet repeatedly get the law completely wrong.
Why is just about everyone here assuming this is a criminal case when the summary clearly says it's a civil one?
I guess when some of the information on the internet is going to be excluded from the retrial, it would be prudent to restrict access to said evidence until a jury has been seated. Once this process has completed, it would then seem to be fair to reopen the files to the public with the strict instruction from the judge to the jury and alternates forbidding them from accessing the prior case files.
Man, I should be a lawyer. I get this stuff! :-p
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Unhelpfully idealistic, I'd say.
Quite often during trial, despite counter instructions from the court, jurors engage in potentially prejudicial extrajudicial activities including discussing the case with family/friends, reading media accounts, and more recently, doing internet research. Just one juror doing so can taint the deliberations of a jury.
The emphasis here is on the goal of delivering a fair trial to the defendant. Treating jurors with unfettered trust is not helpful toward that end, nor should it be particularly important to anybody else as long as restrictions are reasonably justified. (Note that in particularly exposed cases, we resort to juror sequestration.)
11-25-2009 CTFREE - 72943283 Nov 25 2009 1:53:28:810PM - $ 0.00
MORRISSEY, LINDA G.: ORDER ENTERED. DEFENDANT ST. FRANCIS' MOTION TO RECONSIDER IS DENIED. THE COURT CANNOT WEIGH THE EVIDENCE OR ITS CREDIBILITY AND THERE IS TESTIMONY THAT THREE EKG'S SHOW A PATTERN OF MYOCARDIAL ISCHEMIA AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN PRESENTED. IF THE JURY WERE TO BELIEVE THAT THREE EKG'S SUGGEST THAT MR. CAMERON WAS HAVING A HEART ATTACK THEN IT IS REASONABLE TO CONCLUDE THAT THEY MAY NOT BELIEVE A DOCTOR WHO SAYS HE WOULD SEND SOMEONE HOME IN MR. CAMERON'S CONDITION. A JURY MAY NOT BELIEVE DR. ANDERSON WHEN HE SAYS HE WOULD NOT HAVE DONE ANYTHING DIFFERENT IF HE HAD SEEN A "PATTERN OF MYOCARDIAL ISCHEMIA" TESTIFIED TO BY PLAINTIFF'S EXPERT WITNESS. A REASONABLE PERSON COULD FIND THAT 1) THE EKG'S SHOW MYOCARDIAL ISCHEMIA; 2) THAT DR. ANDERSON SHOULD NOT HAVE RELEASED MR. CAMERON TO HIS HOME WHILE SUFFERING A HEART ATTACH; 3) THAT MR. CAMERON LOST A SIGNIFICANT CHANCE OF SURVIVAL BECAUSE HIS HEART ATTACK WAS NOT DETECTED TIMELY, AT LEAST IN PART BY THE FACT THAT ALL EKG'S WERE NOT PRESENTED AND THAT 4) ST. FRANCIS BREACHED THE STANDARD OF CARE. PLAINTIFF'S BURDEN AT THIS STAGE IS TO DEMONSTRATE A CONFLICT OF FACTS AND/OR THE REASONABLE INFERENCES WHICH MAY BE REACHED FROM THEM. IT CANNOT BE FOUND AT THIS TIME THAT THERE IS NO MATERIAL QUESTION OF FACT AS TO THE PLAINTIFF'S NEGLIGENCE CLAIM AGAINST ST. FRANCIS. COPY OF THIS MINUTE WAS MAILED TO DAVID G. GRAVES AND BRAD SMITH; LISA RIGGS AND RICHARD GANN; AMY KEMPFERT AND JOHN BOWLING.
That was the reason that the plaintiff's motion to quash,
10-05-2009 MOQ - CAMERON, PAM 72291829 Oct 6 2009 8:47:07:537AM - $ 0.00 // CERTIFICATE OF MAILING (C2J)
PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO QUASH SUBPOENA DUCES TECUM
was granted. Every other entry except for the description of the jury and trail outcome is labeled merely, "Document Available at Court Clerk's Office."
I (finally) found this record buried in the Oklahoma State Courts Network database, so it wouldn't be cached by Google or archive.org. There (unsurprisingly) doesn't seem to have been any contemporaneous reporting on the case's developments, so closing the record for the duration of the trial would have been completely effective in preventing jury contamination. Just by reading the ruling, I am not entirely sure what it means or what legal principle it implements, so I will easily grant that it would have been prejudicial as hell to a jury; probably not in a rational, predictable way, either.
Joey Senat, an associate professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University, said this court order "is essentially closing off court records from the public."
"If she is going to close off court records, she should have a compelling reason to justify it," said Senat, a former president of Freedom of Information Oklahoma Inc., a watchdog group supporting openness in government.
A compelling reason...like hiding rulings about suppressed evidence from the jury. Right. No need to explore that dimension in the article, of course, that would be too much work. Or perhaps Senat actually is familiar with th