Texas Jury - Why can't I take notes?

Factual Questions
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OK. If Turek was a juror, and had a legal question, the appropriate person to ask about the question would be the judge. The judge would decide what, if anything, the appropriate answer would be. If someone else attempted to answer the question for Turek, they could be seen as tampering with the jury. If a judge got the idea that minty, an attorney, was holding forth on a message board and instructing jurors about what the law was, and what such and such meant, and why this or that happened, he could concievably be in trouble. Sure, he can discuss the law with people and bullshit on message boards all he wants, but he CANNOT do so with jurors. That would be unethical, since the judge of a case is supposed to decide how to answer juror questions.

Now, it turns out Turek never got on a jury, so no harm was done. But suppose he was? Minty just wanted to avoid that scenario.

So why didn’t Minty just say something like what I just said? Because again, that would be a case of an attorney instructing a juror about what the law was, even an explanation of why he couldn’t explain the law is an explanation of the law. I imagine that given what actually happened, with Turek never being on a jury, Minty would have been ethically clear to explain everything. But, he didn’t know exactly what was going on, he didn’t want to ask to get clarification since that could cause problems, and the best thing would be to just shut up and not discuss the law or legal ethics with people on juries or about to enter juries.

Now, I am not a lawyer. But something like this came up the last time I was on a jury…I was reading the instructions and they said something to the effect that jurors couldn’t take notes without the permission of the judge. I asked the judge of the case why we couldn’t take notes, and she said that we could take notes, since she was giving us permission. I believe that judges routinely grant permission to take notes, although I could be wrong (counts fingers).

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My understanding is that it believed by many judges (and others in the legal system) that taking notes often distracts from the jurors’ attention to the case. If you’re looking at your piece of paper to write on it, you’re not looking at the witness’ demeanor to evaluate his credibility.

For most simple cases (e.g., trials lasting a day or two), it’s not really necessary to take notes - most jurors can remember what’s going on just fine, just like you can generally remember the whole plot of a movie or book right after you watch/read it. If it involves complicated technical issues, a judge is more likely to
grant permission to take notes, so the jurors can remember at the end what happened at the beginning. However, even then, a judge (especially a traditionalist) may simply rely on the lawyers to draw everything together and remind the jurors of all the pieces in their closing statements.

All that said, I do not practice in Texas, and I don’t know if there are any special issues there that differ from general practice.