There have been stories recently that judges are having trouble with jurers who use their iphones or blackberries to look up information during a trial-apparently right from the jury box in a few cases. This is not in keeping with how juries are supposed to get their information and several expensive cases have been disrupted as a result. An interesting technical twist.
My question though is where does a juror draw the line. If the juror believes some piece of testimony is wrong (for instance the juror believes a cross-street was misnamed in testimony), and the other lawyer doesn’t challenge it, does the juror rely on his belief, assume the testimony is true even though he thinks it is wrong, share his belief with other jurors, ask the judge, what does one do? I know that now if someone gives me an address and directions, I always google it to make sure. Why isn’t such routine fact-checking allowed in a jury?
When I get an iphone and a jury summons, I will leave the phone at home.
The couple of times that I was on a jury (in Pennsylvania; your juristiction may well have different rules) we jurors were told specifically not to discuss the case with anyone (including the other jurors) during the trial, and not to attempt to perform any investigations on our own. Doing either would be cause for our dismissal as jurors.
(Don’t discuss the case with the other jurors while the trial was going on, even during the many hours we were by ourselves in the jury room right after hearing some juicy testimony. Yeah, sure…)
FYI, the New York Times ran an article about this yesterday. The article says, “Jurors are not supposed to seek information outside of the courtroom. They are required to reach a verdict based on only the facts the judge has decided are admissible, and they are not supposed to see evidence that has been excluded as prejudicial.”
And I served on a jury a couple of years ago. Our cellphones were confiscated during jury deliberations only. Perhaps in the future they’ll confiscate them during the trial. (Although unless the jury is sequestered, which is rarely done, nothing prevents them from doing inappropriate research at the end of the day.)
Our cellphones were confiscated each time we entered the courtroom, and during our deliberation time.
We were allowed to ask questions by writing them down and passing them to the clerk of court, who passed them to the judge. In this way we could seek clarification on any testimony which we weren’t sure of.
Simple answer: because the judge hasn’t admitted whatever they discover by phone-Googling into evidence. In most cases, jurors can ask for clarification, or to have something repeated, or whatever.
My interpretation, from back when I was malpracticing law, is that the juror is entitled to use his/her own knowledge in rendering his decisions. If the juror knows or strongly believes that a piece of testimony is wrong, s/he is certainly entitled to disbelieve that testimony, and to bring that discrepency to the attention of the other jurors, even if the wrong testimony went unchallenged during trial. If another juror has a differing recollection of the facts (like the name of that cross-street), the two jurors “fight it out” in the jury room, and one tries to convince the other of the correctness of his/her recollection of the facts.
If the jurors ask the judge, I’m pretty sure they’ll be told that they have to decide the matter based on their own knowledge and the evidence presented in court during the trial. Just because something (like the name of a cross street) is in evidence and unchallenged doesn’t mean that the jurors are obligated to believe it. Extreme example: what if a witness testified that someone leaped into the air and flew away like Superman? Is the juror obligated to believe that?
we had a lengthy discussion on this issue a while back: Testimony in Spanish, one juror [s]peaks Spanish can lead to mistrial?. The consensus was that jurors are not entitled to rely on their specific personal knowledge to decide the case, because doing so would deprive the parties of the right to know the evidence being relied upon, and also deny the parties the right to challenge it as inaccurate.
Note that this is a different case from the Superman example. A juror is never required to accept the evidence of a particular witness, even if it’s unchallenged. A juror can simply choose not to believe that a person can fly.
Does that mean the jury movie 12 Angry Men is just fiction? IIRC, the “reasonable doubt” juror does some of his own investigations, including walking the area where the defendant supposedly committed a crime, finding and buying a similar knife, etc.
I remember that thread. The system doesn’t sound very robust. Say a particular word is used in the trial. The people in the court knows what it is, say several of the jurors know what it is. But not all. No one thinks to define the term. What do the jurors who don’t know what the term is do? They can ask the judge, but that requires admitting to everyone else that they don’t know what it means-a difficult hurtle to overcome.
The system seems to work, at least for the British system of juries. I understand it is different in other countries. But I don’t see how it works.
The accused was holding a knife to the victim’s neck while they were walking. The victim moved his neck, and the knife injured him. One of the charges which we the jury was to decide, was whether the accused “caused” the injury.
All twelve of us agreed that the accused indirectly caused the injury. All twelve of us were unsure if the accused caused the injury. All twelve of us agreed to ask the judge, “Does indirect causing count as causing?” (or something like that).
The judges response was to simply read us the definition of “cause” from his dictionary.
We were all pretty upset at this non-answer. For lack of any clearer instructions, we had to let him go on that particular charge. (It didn’t really influence much, because he was guilty of all the more serious stuff.) I still refer to this as an example of one of the inequities of our system; it is quite possible that another jury did not think to ask this question, and would simply have convicted him on that count. This is one of the problems that would be solved by experienced, professional jurors (though of course that would introduce a whole bunch of new problems).
Just remember that it’s the job of the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A failure to do so presumes innocence. Letting juries get information from any source not only shifts the burden off the prosecution, but may deny the defense a chance to refute that information. (In American criminal trials, anyway).
So if a juror walks out of the court saying “I let the guy go because I didn’t understand the case against him,” that’s the hallmark of our legal system in action. It’s not just an accidental byproduct or oversight, but a foundation on which everything was built.
Edit: Keeve cross-posted with me, but it’s a perfect example of what I mean. The prosecution failed in their job by not clearly defining the legal terms and the conditions under which you should find the accused guilty.
The part that I don’t understand is this: Why does it matter when the juror acquired this knowledge? If he knew the names of the streets because he lived there last year, or if he knew the names of the streets because he looked at a map during the trial, why is the first acceptable but the second not?
I expect that the answer will be along the lines of it being impossible to exclude previously-learned knowledge. But that doesn’t really explain what is wrong with doing one’s own research during the trial.
Example: Suppose both the prosecution and defense agree that the accused had posession of a certain kind of gun. The question is whether this gun is capable of doing the sort of damage that happened. His defense attorney brings experts who say that there’s no way that this gun did that damage. The prosecution brings experts who show that this gun was certainly capable of doing that damage. The jury is in the unenviable position of having to decide which experts are more believable. If one of the jurors was a gun dealer or hobbyist, he is allowed to use his knowledge and share it with the other jurors. But if they don’t have that good luck, none of the jurors is allowed to go to the library and acquire new knowledge on the topic. This makes no sense to me.
I agree. And I believe that this is a demonstration that the system is not necessarily intended to be the best at finding the truth, but has certain leanings toward mere expedience.
If the only goal were truth, the jury would explain its decisions to the prosecution and defense, and continue the trial, to allow them to correct the errors which they think the jury has made.
But that would allow the trial to last even longer than it already has, so in the name of expedience, we have to put an end to it at some point. Sad…
Because evidence is entered into the trial via rules that both sides have to follow. It’s vetted for being relevant, then both sides get to examine it, attempt to refute it, and present their case to the jury. Your research isn’t subject to any of that. It may or not be relevant, it will not be cross-examined, it may not be valid. It’s not fair to either the prosecution or the defense.
I thought of that, but it was only an example. There could easily be other, more subtle, things which a juror might know about and the lawyers didn’t think to ask.
For example, the lawyers might exclude anyone who lives or works in a certain part of town. Then, at some later point, a juror remembers that a few years ago, his brother made a relevant comment about that part of town.
I wonder if that’s why I’m never summoned for jury duty? Someone, somewhere, knows that I’m likely to be excluded because I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself from using my own brain.
