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Juror's Tweets Overturn Trial Verdict
D H NG writes "The Arkansas Supreme Court had overturned a murder conviction due to a juror tweeting during the trial. Erickson Dimas-Martinez was convicted in 2010 of killing a teenager and was sentenced to death. His lawyers appealed the case on account of a juror tweeting his musings during the trial and because another juror nodded off during the presentation of evidence. Tweets sent include 'The coffee here sucks' and 'Court. Day 5. here we go again.' In an opinion, Associate Justice Donald Corbin wrote 'because of the very nature of Twitter as an... online social media site, Juror 2's tweets about the trial were very much public discussions.' Dimas-Martinez is to be given a new trial."
Obviously this is becoming a problem because you don't need to be on the phone to be on the phone anymore, simple solution is to give the juror's an emergency hotline number to pass out (if the mom dies or something) and take away the damned phones during trial.
Contrary to popular belief you will not die if you are not able to operate a telephone computer device for the length of a day.
Any type of incident such as this should be considered obstruction of justice, or at least contempt of court, and should come with a fine and/or jail sentence(if only a few days). Jurors not paying attention or disregarding orders can cost lives (either by sentencing an innocent man to death, or freeing an actual murderer and allowing him to kill again). Jury duty is not something that should be taken lightly, and is one of the few things the government asks you to do in regards to civic duty. A lot of people can't even do this right, or don't want to. People want so much from the government, but they can't even be bothered to do one simple thing like pay attention and do your duty.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
However, the judge has to consider the possibility that the juror may have received DMs on Twitter that may actually impact the trial. This is why jurors are sequestered in the first place, to prevent outside communications from impacting the jury's decision.
I can understand why jurors shouldn't receive outside information about the trial (though have a personal bone over expecting experts to magically forget everything they know for the purposes of serving on a jury). But non-detail-bearing outbound messages? Seriously, so what? That has no effect on the actual trial or the defendant's ability to enjoy the due process of law leading to a more-or-less fair verdict.
How do you know the juror hasn't already been compromised, and is sending out information regarding the direction of deliberation in a predetermined code? For all you know, "the coffee here sucks" could mean that the deliberation is going against the way the tampering party wants. Hell, it could even be code aimed at a news outlet so that they can get the scoop, by knowing what the verdict is trending towards beforehand? And if information can go out, information can be going in as well. If a juror has access to his twitter account, he has access to anyone who associated them with that account (like a follower), or targets him with a post. The goal of rules such as this is to attempt to avoid any appearance of impropriety or impartiality, whether there is any or not.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I didn't even know you were allowed to have your phone with you. I haven't personally had jury duty, but the rest of my family has and they said they were told to leave their phones in their cars. In fact, my family didn't even tell each other about any details of the case until after the trial, and we never asked. None of our business.
It boggles the mind that people think these things are okay. I don't know when or where I learned it, but I have it ingrained in me that until the trial is over, what happens in court, stays in court. Including how bad the coffee is.
That juror is a moron and deserves punishment. If I was the family of the murdered kid, I would be furious and incredibly upset. I'm sure he'll get convicted again anyway, but that's not the point. Having to go through the process again, especially after hearing the first time the guilty verdict. That has got to suck.
How do you get a fair verdict when one of the jurors fell asleep and the one looked at a murder trial as some mundane routine. Those jurors had someone's life in their hands and that's how they approached the trial? It's disgraceful and both of them should seriously rethink their entire lives. It's pathetic and the defendant absolutely deserves a second trial with jurors who take their responsibility seriously.
bullshit, whether or not it produces or hinders justice would depend on how it was used.
Arguably, the fact that the jurors had their phones with them provided valuable evidence of them absolutely not giving a fuck about a fairly important matter(It's only some guy being charged with murder, this isn't going to be on the test, right your honor?). In a way, it might be more valuable to leave people the means to easily and verifiably show that they are slacking off, rather than force them to slack off in more silent ways...
Seriously, tweeting about coffee and falling asleep during presentation of evidence, in a case about something slightly graver than a parking ticket?
I suppose the downside of a jury of one's peers is that one's peers are dangerously likely to be fuckwits with an attention span challenged by most commercial breaks...
The possibility of it is actually *required* for the system to be just. You appear to confused about the concept.
Simple. Juror is ordered not to post anything on the Internet. Juror *disregards* the order, therefore juror has shown he can't be trusted to follow instructions the judge has given him.
You can't undo an execution, nor can you compensate the executed person if the conviction was in error. If you're considering killing a man, common decency demands you at least provide him with a jury that can be trusted to follow instructions.
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> Jury nullification is something which breaks the deal and makes it even harder to obtain justice
You clearly do not understand jury nullification. It *increase* justice, it doesn't make it harder to obtain justice. The jury can refuse to convict someone of an unjust law. Many laws are either not just, or are not just when applied to a particular circumstance where other factors were involved. In such cases, the jury has the power to nullify the unjust law.
It's disturbing that so many people are unaware of their moral and ethical obligations in this space.
From the opinion:
The opinion never mentioned the coffee tweet, but it did mention what tweets were much more of a flagrant violation of do not discuss the case outside of the court room. I do agree that it seems like Juror 2 was having a tough time with the case, and with the possible verdict and punishment. I think the court correctly overturned the conviction.
Jury duty is not a paying job, it's your duty (hence the name) to help keep a just society functioning.
If anything, your payment is living in a land that isn't (yet) totalitarian. Avoiding jury duty is as bad for society as skipping out on paying taxes.
Bullshit. ,as well as to make sure whether he's guilty or not.
The precise reason the jury is allowed to do this is to make sure the law stands up to the scrutiny of the common people
The next guy who breaks the unjust law has a precedent on his hands in the case you described above.
But I don't wonder.. the above opinion is exactly the sort the lawyers and judges want you to have, because they don't want any common sense injected into their meddling with justice.
When something goes to trial the plaintiff or prosecutor and the defense agree to a set of ground rules which include the jury only acting within their power and on the basis of the evidence given. Jury nullification is something which breaks the deal and makes it even harder to obtain justice as the prosecutor/plaintiff has to then worry about the opinions of the jury as to whether or not the defendant should be guilty, not whether or not they did it.
We have a legal system, not justice. A very important distinction. Otherwise we wouldn't have DAs who are measured by their conviction rates, "success" stacked towards those with the most money, innocents executed, being held without a trial etc.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Nullification is a jury ignoring the law in favor of their personal preferences.
Correct.
That is not what a jury is there to do. They are not charged with weighing what the law says, only whether it applies and whether the defendant is guilty of it.
Wrong. Absolutely and unarguably false, and quite frankly a dangerous lie.
"If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law." -- Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone
It is not only the juror's right, but his duty, to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the directions of the court.-- John Adams
Jury nullification is our last defense against tyranny. When the legislative branch creates unjust laws, the judicial branch allows them to stand, and the executive branch enforces them, it is the juror's moral duty to refuse to convict. That is the sole reason for juries to exist. -- Me
Like anything it can be abused. That is why there are 12 or more members of jury. It provides a pretty adequate check on the power of any one juror. So one crazy that thinks practically every law should never be enforced is not easily able to run away with nullification.
Nullification is rarely needed but very important to justice in those situations where the law as written fails to fairly describe a situation. Most likely because the legislators did not envision it or perhaps because a special interest *bought* it. I am glad I live in a nation where if I stood trial and 12 of my peers can agree that if they had been in my situation they'd have done the same and it would have been the right thing, I would go free.
Yes a prosecutor can decide not to bring charges, but \s?he is one person who faces all kinds of varying pressures, from different places. The jury on the other hand is 12 unknown people who's identities are hopefully not widely knowable at least until after the trial is concluded.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
As we move towards a police state, jury nullification can be a valuable weapon in the war for liberty against oppressive laws that should not be enforced. That is just one example out of many situations where jury nullification is a great thing.
You are wrong. The point of a jury is to decide if the action of the defendant was something that should be punished, even if it violates the letter of the law. If the jury does not believe that the defendant's action should be illegal, it is intended that they find the defendant "not guilty". There is a valid reason that jury nullification is not talked about, if jury nullification was brought up more there would be cases where the jury found the defendant "not guilty" because he was "such a nice guy." Jury nullification is only to be used when the jury does not believe that the action in question should be a crime. Jury nullification should not be used when the jury thinks, "Yes, he did what they said he did. And, yes, that definitely should be a crime. But this guy should not be punished because I like him." The latter is too close to, "No, he did not do what they said he did, but this guy should be punished because I don't like him."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
and im sure the Labor board would love to hear about somebody getting canned over Jury Duty since i think that is one of the things IT IS A FELONY TO FIRE OVER.
Nobody actually gets fired for serving on jury duty... or taking maternity leave... or putting in their obligatory National Guard time.
Funny, though, how much discretion your employer has on who gets promoted, who gets raises, who gets sacked when hard times come.
I don't think you understand the word duty its something you must do. Even if you were not compensated at all it would still be your duty. Occasional jury duty is just one of the many prices we must pay for living in a free society.
Look at this way unlike your taxes, which are all to often stolen by some corporate welfare fat cat, at some justice will be done when you serve on jury.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
How about we split the difference and call it contempt of court?
You know, that crime that already exists, and doesn't run afoul of the 8th Amendment?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
And the OP was saying make sure to read up on the concept so that the person going on jury duty doesn't do something nullify the jury. Having unnecessary retrials is also a bad thing, both in terms of justice and as waste of a lot of people's time and money. Doing the kinds of things that nullify a jury is anathema to justice. For example, like making and receiving tweets about a trial you are on the jury for. YOU are the one who is supposed to listen and make the verdict based on the fact of the case in front of you, not your twitter followers and their opinions (which have the possibility of influencing you). But we already know that nullification can be good or bad depending on how it is used. Just about everything we talk about depends on how 'it' is used, it is generally implied. So to argue 'it depends' all the time is pointless.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Yes, but people on the internet argue for jury nullification for drug dealers and the like, because marijuana being illegal is a "crime" itself.
As a person who uses the internet, I agree. Marijuana should not be illegal and I could not, in good conscience, vote to convict someone of breaking the law that prohibit marijuana possession or sale. Such action would directly conflict with my own moral standards, and in my opinion, it would be a crime against humanity to allow another human being to be imprisoned for marijuana, regardless of what the law suggests. This would be exactly the type of situation where jury nullification is necessary. It takes a long time to change the law; why should we, as citizens and jurors, facilitate the destruction of innocent lives for trivial nonviolent "offenses" simply because these unjust, outdated laws are still on the books?
I don't see why we can't pay jurors some modest amount, though. Surely it's in all our interests to keep a justice system functioning. Occasionally, trials take a long time, so a jury may be sequestered for weeks. Why should the cost be borne entirely by the people who, by random chance, end up on the jury for such trials, especially since they're already sacrificing in other ways (e.g. not seeing their families or attending to other business for weeks)? The financial burden, at least, seems like it could be generally shared by taxpayers, at least to the level of reimbursing them at minimum wage.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Frankly, I don't see any problem with the scenario you described?
A court case involving a jury *should* be about what they believe took place (or didn't take place), based upon all of the evidence and arguments brought before them. If the engineer types are fixated on scientific evidence showing a person incinerated his wife's body so want to find him guilty, but nobody else on that jury is sold on it for whatever other reasons -- then perhaps the guy should go free?
It's the job of the prosecutor to convince the jury that the evidence supports his claims. Not everyone has a technical background, and not everyone who does is very good at thinking "outside the box" either, in cases where maybe there's an alternate explanation for the events to the one they're so certain took place by focusing strictly on the technical details?
Scientists and engineers are wrong sometimes, after all. We have bridges that collapsed shortly after being built, presumably by engineers who were confident they constructed it in a sound manner.....
I don't tweet, but I have served on several juries. The judge always admonishes the jury to not discuss the trial until after it's over. The judge does not prevent any and all contact with other people, only contact related to the proceedings. Tweeting is not much different than talking and this juror was not sequestered and not talking about the case. I see this as a bad decision. (I cannot read the whole decision itself. Only the first few pages appear at the link from TFA.)
Things are never as simple as Internet Libertarians think they are.
Conversely, Internet Libertarians are *always* as simple as I think they are.
for not having the baliff collect all the cell phones prior to the jury taking the box. Aparently justice really is blind... or stupid.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
It depends on the facts.
Prosecutorial discretion is very large. Frequently the wrong decisions are made. Prosecuting a child when a group of children are playing with a gun, it goes off, and someone dies. Prosecuting someone who is insane as if they were not. Prosecuting someone for political reasons rather than because it makes sense. Sometimes a verdict of not guilty is the right result even when someone is guilty, because the consequences of a guilty verdict are more harmful than helpful.
The political process is deeply flawed, and legislative bodies will almost never vote to reduce sentences or decriminalize activities because that is rarely politically popular.
There is a difference between ex-post and ex-ante decisionmaking. In front of a house, one makes a judgment between alternative acts, and the law is one factor that weighs heavily in those alternatives. In a jury, one decides what the consequences of that choice should be beyond those already encountered.
A judge has plenty of immunity. He also has a massive amount of "discretion." If a judge applies all of his discretion in favor of one party, it effectively creates an unfair trial--at the very least an unjust one--even though there is no room for review on appeal.
Where is your hate crimes claim from?
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
I was on a jury once and was pleasantly surprised at my fellow jurors' intelligence. Everybody there seemed interested in following the process correctly and to the best of our ability. Our discussions were insightful and I feel the experience was a very valuable one for me.
My experience with jury duty was similar. All of the jurors were intelligent and genuinely concerned about arriving at a just verdict. It was a DUI case, and while every single one of us thought the defendant was a scumbag and was pretty sure he had in fact been driving drunk, we also unanimously agreed that the state had failed miserably to meet the burden of proof and that there was enough reasonable doubt to justify a "not guilty" verdict. It wasn't a "CSI" kind of thing either, and wasn't so much for lack of evidence as that the cops dropped the ball pretty much every step of the way and destroyed what should have been a solid case.
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You are violating the trust society put in you
No more than a cop enforcing a bad law violates the trust society places in him. Jury nullification is part of the checks and balances of our three-branch system of government. The legislature can choose not to pass a bad law, but if they do the executive can choose not to enforce it, and if all else fails the judiciary (via the jury) can choose not to convict under it.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas