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

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...

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.