Let’s imagine a similar situation. The only difference is that instead of researching the poison and stumbling upon a fact, the juror in question was already aware of that fact even before the start of the trial. How does this lead to a different situation? It doesn’t appear to me that the research itself is the problem. The problem is missing, but relevant, information.
Exactly. The last thing I want in an adversarial system is jurors playing amateur detective. As a juror, I’m ethically bound to decide a case based on the information presented to me. If there’s missing information, it’s probably missing for a damned good reason. Surely the attorneys know how to Google, too. What if the “fact” I look up is false? What if it’s been illegally obtained? What if it’s incomplete? Also, by looking up this “fact” on my own, I’m not giving the prosecution or defense the opportunity to contest my finding, or to put it in its correct context. In my opinion, it’s completely unethical and unfair as a juror to do my own fact-finding. Decide the case based on what’s in front of you, nothing more, nothing less. If you find there’s not enough info to decide, that’s a fair and correct finding, too.
That’s part of the lawyers’ duties. They’re supposed to find out if there is any likely pseudoevidence out there that would cause a juror to reach a false conclusion and they do pre-hearing interviews where they ascertain if jurors are aware of this pseudoevidence. It doesn’t necessarily bar jurors because there is also the opportunity to debunk the pseudoevidence during the course of the trial. The only serious problem is when the lawyers have reason to believe the pseudoevidence has not entered the trial (because they ascertained nobody knew it before the trial and they did not enter it themselves) when it fact it did enter via some juror conducting his own investigation during the trial. Because the lawyers would not seek to debunk the pseudoevidence in such a case and that’s when it would be able to unduly influence the outcome of the trial.
Certainly it does. It is completely impractical to limit the esoteric knowledge jury members acquired before the beginning of a trial, or at least before the beginning of the case (i.e. before reports of the crime itself became public). However, it is very practical for jurors to limit their acquisition of information specific to the case after it has started, especially acquisition that they initiated. Anybody who believes in principles such as there being laws governing how prosecutors can get their evidence would have to agree that gathering their own evidence independently would make it impossible for the courts to maintain the spirit of those laws.
Every time I’ve been on a jury, these things were explained well enough for me to follow them. I am impressed that our legal system has tried to do a much better job over the years, through the dedicated work of many, than I am likely to do in an ad hoc way browsing the web.
I’m picturing criminal trials in the future, where you can log on to “Criminal Justice.com” and participate in trials over the internet, where everyone can present anything they can find that’s relevant to the case and everyone can vote online with regard to the defendant’s innocence/guilt.
The most relevant aspect of this juror’s “investigation”, as I see it, is that it is up to the prosecution to meet the “burden of proof.” If there might be important, critical information, and this juror, or others, could not in good conscience convict the defendant unless and until that information has been provided, then the prosecution has failed in its duty to convince the jury to whatever level the burden of proof for this charge may be (preponderance of the evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond a shadow of a doubt, et cetera.)
This is precisely what the adversarial format of jury trials is intended to achieve. This is why there are explicit laws relating to how, and under what circumstances, evidence may be collected, and how it should be presented, even if it should be allowed at all.
Many times, the attorney for one side or the other has an objection to the admission of some piece of evidence. The judge may sustain or overrule the objection, or allow the evidence to be admitted with some caveats. By doing their own research, the juror has completely defeated the whole “admission-of-evidence” routine which is critical to a fair trial, moreso in a capital case.
Even to the point that this juror had requested permission to ask a prosecution witness a question. If the prosecution wanted the jury to have that information, it was up to the prosecutor to ask his witness to provide it during questioning. The judge rightly refused the request, as it is not the function of a jury to participate in the actual conduct of the trial, only to hear and evaluate the evidence, as presented, as mhendo pointed out earlier.
Are you forgetting that we have a constitution, which mentions “due process” (not due results)? The court system, with over two centuries of precedence, is how our society has clearly decided to handle things like this. The legal process–with its long-established procedures–is a social process, whereby society makes decisions about what to do about problems. (What makes you think that the internet–or anything else–could suddenly change that any more than electric megaphones?) Do you think jurors are some kind of separate species of human that is pulled out of a special cabinet for trials? The conceit that trials are a means to divine an absolute truth is more the legacy of the “Perry Mason” show, wherein without fail–at the end of every episode–we discover not only exactly what happened as only God could know it, but also who is the truly “bad” person and who is the truly “good” person. But that’s TV; that’s entertainment.
Didn’t you mean to write:
The adversarial system assumes that both the prosecution and defense are equally qualifed. This is often not even close
Overworked public defenders or prosecutors set to make a name for themselves can lead to imbalanced results.
Americans are taught trials are about finding the truth and JUSTICE. This is far from the reality.
The prosecution will say, “It’s my job to bring the conviction home. It’s the cops to job to arrest the suspects and the grand jury to indict.”
The cops say “I arrest, and the judge decides”
And so on
By dividing the concept of truth and justice into segments, each process can rationalize away any responsibility or guilt it feels from a bad or hurried decision.
If you want a true adversarial system, then let’s simply hold the trial without jurors at all and film it. Then you can transcribe it.
That way the objections and improper evidence and statements can be filtered out. This way the jurors will only read the facts and won’t be swayed by any emotion or personality.
Depending on who you had, it would go more the way of “wait a minute, how’s that possible?” followed by a list of at least three reasons why what just got said (either by the witnesses of by one of the lawyers) makes absolutely no sense.
The police are not designed on an adversarial basis. They’d be happy if everyone cooperated with them and did what they asked. All they’d have to do to investigate a crime would be to take out an ad in the newspaper asking the culprit to turn himself in.
The court system, on the other hand, is designed on an adversarial basis. But you only mentioned one side. Sure, the presecution is trying to get a conviction - that’s their role. But for every prosecution, there’s a defense whose role is to get an acquittal.
I have somewhat of a concern about this. I’ve been called to be a Grand Juror in April. Now of course I know that I’m not supposed to be researching any case I might be weighing. The problem is that my job involves researching people on a fairly non-stop basis, and it’s not inconceivable that I’ll run into something about the case online while I’m working on something else (and, since I’ll only be called two or three days a week and would be working the other days, it’s not an option to stop working entirely).
Legal Doper thoughts on this?
IANAL, but I understand that you can bring up any concerns like this during jury selection. Basing my extensive knowledge on Crichton novels and lawyer movies, often one of the first questions potential jurors are asked is about professions - you probably don’t want anybody from the medical sector in a medical trial, for example, as their interpretation of medical data presented would be different from that of your average joe.
Too many jurors knowledge about the criminal justice system comes from watching television dramas or movies. Many jurors fancy themselves as being a prosecutor or a defense attorney, as these are the real stars of the trial…they’re the ones with the speaking parts.
It’s natural that some jurors want to take up the role of prosector or defense attorney and do some research on their own and then become the star of the jury deliberations. Most jurisdictions have remedies for this, with alternate jurors. If the jury foreman or other jurors are aware of a rogue juror (acting outside of the bounds of the juror duties) the judge can be informed and that particular juror can be replaced with an alternate.
The problem is not so much the adversarial nature of the system but the romantic notion that we can always, necessarily, arrive at some kind of perfectly objective “truth” about a situation. But I repeat, that’s epistemologically impossible. The JUSTICE part comes from the process itself, which is possible, and therefore we have the concept of “due process” in the Fifth and Fourteenth.
Self-imposed ignorance? What a concept! :rolleyes:
Was there anything in this little spiel that addressed the issue/thread topic of juror’s access to information? Defending the perfidy of lawyers sounds to me more like the makings of a good pit thread than a legitimate topic of discussion in this thread.
I believe the issue turns mostly on the distinction between public and confidential information. Publicly available information about a case the lawyers for either side have not taken into account yet wish to have suppressed, poses a problem. They should deal with it and ensure the jury is not unduly influenced if they do their homework. Can the information not being presented in court potentially sway the case either way? If so, suppressing or restricting access to it basically amounts to censorship.
This is not in conflict with jury standards. A juror is supposed to bring his or her generalized judgment and knowledge, but not to seek out facts about the parties or the case before him or her. A juror’s judgment is to be applied only to the information presented in court.
You go to the judge and tell him your problem. He’ll dismiss you from the case and either declare a mistrial or replace you with an alternative juror.
If a juror thinks there is missing but relevant information, the jury can send a query to the judge. The juror must then abide by the judge’s decision regarding that query. It’s the judge’s job to decide what is relevant, not the jury’s. The jury’s role is to take the information the judge has admitted as relevant and reach a conclusion regarding the facts, if possible. If not possible, then it’s a mistrial.
It would also go on and on for at least 5 pages, with endless tit-for-tat snipes whereby each poster would insist on having the last word. No one would ever rest his or her case. 
That seems grossly unfair given the premise though, right? Would the juror have the ability to communicate this information to the defense/prosecution in some way?
This is what I don’t like about our court system. It’s a bunch of rules eh… lawyering.
It’s not about the truth, it’s about how much BS you can shove down a handful of people who just want to go home/work, who are, at times, essentially hampered in their ability to find the truth because of some stupid regulation.
Absolutely not. What’s unfair is for the judge to allow you to continue to serve on the jury without any chance for either party to understand your knowledge or challenge it. If it didn’t come out in open court, you’re not supposed to consider it. After all, you might be wrong or you might not understand why it’s unfair or irrelevant for it to be considered. That’s why there’s a judge.
No, it’s the duty of the judge to make such determinations. And if the parties failed to notice something in making their case, they must bear the burden for that failure.
No, it’s not about stupid rules or stupid regulations. It’s about being fair.