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."

Comments

So what?

[pla]

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.

Re:Why are Juror's even allowed to have their phon

[Nidi62]

Or sentence the jurors to the maximum sentence possible, based on the criminal charges against the defendant.

No, that's too harsh. I say that, if you are caught doing this during the course of a trial, you are removed, your replacement comes in, and you are confined for the rest of the trial. If it comes out after a trial that you did this and there is a mistrial/retrial, then you should be confined for the duration of that trial. That way people realize that this is a serious duty.

Re:Uh oh.

[hedwards]

That's every bit as much an abuse of the system as the DA that includes questionable evidence or testimony.

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.

Re:Uh oh.

[TheLink]

If nullification is used, then the defendant goes free and nothing is changed.

At the very least the defendant would disagree with you ;).

Consider this

[Anonymous Coward]

While I tend to agree with you about jury nullification, what about this?

Muslim man kils his wife because she attempts to divorce him. Jury picked from the local population, which just happens to be a mostly Muslim community, refuses to convict him of murder because they believe, contrary to the law of the land, that his actions were justified.

Food for thought.

Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

On television, you get a lot of people who don't say "it depends." I'd rather have my friends say "it depends" about most things--there is nuance in life.

Especially on an issue like jury nullification, there are MASSIVE reasons why sometimes it should be used and sometimes it should not be. If your police are being abusive or your prosecutors are prosecuting people they have no business prosecuting or your legislature is passing unjust laws or your judge is not giving someone a fair trial, it may be that jury nullification is your best option as a juror.

On the other hand, jury nullification is most often used as a tool of a racist to show solidarity with a defendant from his or her race, rather than for a reasoned moral purpose. This is blatant racism and is bad.

Though the latter is more frequent than the former, the importance of the former--and the administrative problem with preventing jury nullification while still allowing the jury to have any meaningful power--is significant.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Administratively, you can't prevent jury nullification without policing jury decision-making. But that is problematic because you run into the problem of the judge who throws the jury in jail because they make the "wrong" decision. (Actually happened a few centuries ago.) In effect, the jury right now gets to make a decision which basically can't be reviewed. The alternative is to give someone the power to say that a jury which held someone had not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is lying.

You could police that jury decision by allowing someone in the jury room to listen to how they made the decision and prevent them from making it based on something other than law. But that person would have effectively more power than the judge, and the jury would effectively have none.

You could also retry people. Double jeopardy presents issues, though.

Re:Racism, Justice, and Jury Nullification

[LVSlushdat]

But that is problematic because you run into the problem of the judge who throws the jury in jail because they make the "wrong" decision. (Actually happened a few centuries ago.)

Actually it happened right here in the good ole' USA about 6 years ago. Federal Judge Kent Dawson, who presided over the trial of Irwin Schiff, a well-known "income tax" protester, instructed the jury that they MUST find Mr Schiff guilty on all counts or THEY would would be personally guilty of a federal crime. NONE of the prosecutions allegations were proven, and all defenses Mr Schiff's attorney provided were disallowed by this judge. Since I live in Las Vegas, which is where the trial was held, I attended as much of the trial as I could. I nearly became violently ill when I heard this black-robed monster give these jury instructions. Several months after the trial, it came out that several jurors on the trial who were aware of jury nulliication stated they would have voted to acquit, but for the chilling effect of that jury instruction. Apparently none of these jurors had the cojones to ask the judge to please quote the law that he would charge them with should they vote to acquit. I guess I really don't blame them since these black-robed terrorists have all the power (in their mind). Several other high-profile tax protestor cases were found not-guilty despite the same "kangaroo-court" atmosphere during their trials. Trials like Mr Schiffs I would have expected to see back in the old soviet union days in Russia, NOT the USA...

Re:Uh oh.

[grumling]

It's unlikely the OP will be seated on a case that has anything to do with constitutional law.

If the OP's experience is anything like what I've had happen in the past, it involves a lot of waiting around and a general loss of faith in humanity.

Re:Uh oh.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

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.

Not true. "Common Sense" is given a ridiculous, unjust, and unjustified weight in the courtroom. Jurors are expected to rely on their "common sense" in making their evaluations, to a point where courts will rarely let you present any evidence showing that "common sense" is wrong. Courtrooms are about narrative, about selling a story, about appealing to common sense. It doesn't matter if everyone on the jury is wrong because they have an unjustified belief in the fidelity of eyewitness testimony or of a written document. It just matters what they think. What does their "common sense" tell them about what happened?

Interestingly, laypeople and engineer types sometimes diverge significantly in their verdict. I remember one guy who was on a jury where the defendant incinerated his wife's body. Hung jury because the laypeople didn't believe he'd killed her.

Re:Uh oh.

[jonbryce]

Jury nulification means finding the defendant innocent regardless of the evidence against them. This is something jurors have a constitutional right to do. If you don't think the act the defendant was charged with should be against the law, you can find them not innocent even if it is absolutely obvious they did it.

Re:Uh oh.

[russotto]

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.

Everything the defendant "agrees to" is under duress. If he refuses to co-operate with the system, the system will simply continue to operate to convict and sentence him. There is no deal.

The way I look at it, if I am placed on a jury (under duress, as jury duty is compulsory) where the defendant is unquestionably in violation of the law, but the law is something I feel is unjust, I really have only two choices -- I can ratify the injustice by voting "guilty", or I can deny or delay the injustice by voting "not guilty". To me, the choice is easy; I will not willingly facilitate injustice.

That sword cuts both ways

[LrdDimwit]

Jury nullification is also a great way to enact tyranny of the majority. How many white people went to jail for lynching black people in the thirties? And then there's this case where it's kind of hard to avoid the implication that the jury thought it was okay to kill gays.

Jury nullification yes, can be used to fight oppression by the system, like the Fugitive Slave Law. But it's also great for trial-by-popularity-contest. The entire point of jury nullification is "screw the rules, I'm going to do what's 'right'". Sometimes that works, but jury nullification makes no distinction between good parts of the system, and bad parts.

Many parts of the system are there to protect the fair interests of justice. Juries can nullify them too. The rules over what evidence is admissible, for example - most juries aren't physically sequestered in a room with no phone and no internet the entire duration of the trial. They can easily search the internet for all kinds of half-baked "evidence". The judge is supposed to keep all that out of court, because it's unverified, or scientifically dubious, etc.

Jury nullification is an incredibly dangerous thing. It is not justice at all, because it is fundamentally capricious in nature. Justice is supposed to be the same for everybody.

Re:Uh oh.

[hairyfeet]

Yes but you CAN save a life. When my mom was on jury duty she came in after it was over white as a sheet and said 'Don't you EVER get a jury trial always ask for a judge!" and when I asked her what was wrong here was what I was told:

The case was arson of a restaurant, there was NO motive, as the guy didn't even have enough insurance to cover what he owed and had to file chap 11, there was NO evidence as even the fire investigator said he couldn't say with any certainty WHAT had started the fire and the place had already had two close calls thanks to wiring shorts, yet the jury wanted to convict and it was only my mom that hung them up, why? "Because he is Italian and Italians are in the mob and burn buildings, didn't you ever see goodfellas?"

That's right folks, your system at work. the man nearly lost 20 years of his life because of a ray liotta movie. the jury didn't care about a thing said in the court other than the fact he was Italian. If it hadn't been for my mom it really would have been "12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty". Now would you REALLY want to bet your life on the hope there is a single smart one in the pile of morons? I'm glad the guy is gonna do his jury duty but I bet when its over he too will have a nice horror story about how fucking DUMB the American public has become. it is truly "March of the morons" out there folks. Scary huh?