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Should Smartphones Be Allowed In Court?
coondoggie writes "Federal courts have been debating how much freedom users of smartphones and portable wireless devices in general should have in a federal courthouse. Some say they should be banned outright, while others say they should be allowed, but their use curtailed (PDF). Unregulated use of smartphones has resulted in mistrials, exclusion of jurors and fines in some case."
No different then cameras or other recording devices in most courts.
Leave them at the door.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
in my local courthouse for several years, due to fear of courtroom observers using texting to coordinate witness testimony. That decision was made when the clerk of court's teenage son showed him that he could text with his phone in his shirt pocket.
Don't forget jurors are sometimes sequestered with no access to any type of news so they are not "contaminated" by mass media or other type of news. At least in those cases, smart phones would be a big no-no.
They are sometimes allowed to get newspapers although where the articles regarding the trial they are involved in are removed when they are sequestered for weeks.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Of course, what we get in the US is a predominance of both of these sorts of jurors. They watch a lot of TV and are sure they have stumbled into something interesting. Or they are there because there isn't anything else interesting to do at the rest home. Worse, they didn't want to serve, couldn't think of a way out of it and now are there and are very, very hostile about it - he must be guilty or he wouldn't have been arrested, can we go now?
The smartphone is of use to both these sorts of people and in neither case is it useful or helpful but is actually very, very damaging to the system. And if you happen to be the guy on trial with 10 of these sorts of jurors you are going to be very angry at the guilty verdict.
Perhaps they should spend that idle time pondering the importance of the decisions they will be making and the impacts those decisions will have on the various parties involved -- and taking stock of their own capacity to be objective, their own internalized biases, and personal foibles, in order to offer a fairer verdict at the end of the process. Instead of playing Angry Birds. Just a thought.
A pen and notepad is not a broadcasting device. And use of many other recording devices is restricted: you will often only see hand-drawn illustrations of court cases because cameras were not allowed in the courthouse.
So, you think it's okay for jurors to, on their own, access information pertinent to the case, without giving the defense or prosecution an opportunity to examine that information and discuss it in court? You think people should be convicted based on secret information their attorneys didn't even know about? Nice...
So are you saying they should throw out all rules for evidence such as speculation, hearsay, conjecture, etc.?
Jurors are charged with making a ruling based on the evidence presented not the "evidence" they can Google.
Might I advise against getting a Windows Phone?
Problem with that is that our culture is gaining a sense of entitlement thanks to the "always connected" fad. How do you convince people that it's wrong to use tech in courtrooms when everything else is telling them that it's their God-given right to have 24-7 access to Twitter? I too believe in treating the disease before the symptoms, but this goes much deeper than - as one poster put it - jurors playing Angry Birds. People first need to realise that just because they can do something doesn't always mean they should, which may sound like common sense but seems to be lacking in the general population.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Whether the judge controls the information is beside the point. The point is, the defense needs the opportunity to address the information in court. I don't understand how replacing one potential problem with a much, much bigger problem helps anything.
Yeah, but after 5 minutes thought, then what?
It's not really a surprise no one wants to be a juror, you're treated almost like the prisoner in some case, cut off from the world and with shitty pay to boot.
When I served on a jury the bailiff collected our cell phones before the trial and gave them back afterward. They also provided all writing materials and collected them when the trial was over. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
How can it be less clear? The whole point of a trial is that the jury does NOT have unfettered access to information.
First and most obvious are the rules of evidence - if you are on trial, do you want the jury to have access to the results of an illegal search that just happened to be 'leaked'? Do you want the jury to search the papers and find that you have been charged with the same type of offense before?
Next is the constitutional right to confront your accuser. A juror looking up information on his own is not giving the defense a chance to rebut the information. Also, the defense (or even the prosecution) would not have prior knowledge of what things a juror was looking up, so they would not have time to prepare a proper rebuttal (get expert witnesses, etc).
Giving jurors access to information outside the courtroom is just an awful idea.
Kind of sad, though. I mean, are you absolutely certain that you will never stand trial before a jury, for anything? And if not, who would you like to be on that jury?
Me, I honestly don't have a problem with sitting on a jury. Some people treat it like they're being drafted to Vietnam. It's not like that at all (and it happens to me every single year, so I know). It's a pain in the ass, but it's actually pretty interesting, and in the end it's seldom much of a drain on your time. Especially a criminal jury; criminal trials are usually short, and often last just a day or two. You're much more likely to get called for a strong-arm robbery or a drug sales charge than for a murder. (Civil trials, on the other hand, are a totally different matter, and can last months -- I dread the times I'm called for those.)
So to my previous point, fuck's sake -- these people who are on trial for these criminal charges, they're people just like you. A lot of them are scumbag criminals, but some of them didn't even do what they're charged with. This is the essence of our jury system: It's not some elitist racket designed to let people like you dodge being on jury duty. Rather, it's designed so that people like you will sit on juries so that people like you don't go to prison for breaking laws they never broke.
Breakfast served all day!