Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge’s instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.
Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, wasting eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.
“We were stunned,” said the defense lawyer, Peter Raben, who was told by the jury that he was on the verge of winning the case. “It’s the first time modern technology struck us in that fashion, and it hit us right over the head.”
It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges.
If there are any idiots is this story, it’s the lawyers and judges who are actually surprised that the people they put on juries are really stupid enough to think this wasn’t a violation of the rules. Or are surprised that the people who pretended to have no biases about the case and pretended to know nothing about the case during jury selection wouldn’t promptly go out and violate rules.
If anything, I’m surprised the people admitted their violations.
Same things happen in colleges. Students using camera phones to take pictures of questions and texting them to friends so that they either know the questions when they take the exam later or else have their friends look up the answers and text them back.
Speaking now as a retired electronic engineer (1990’s) that remembers performing tests in shielded rooms that would deny the transmission of signals in or out. Of course they cost a lot. Couldn’t there be a less costly way, a test aisle very similar in construction to those used in airports. I don’t think I could design such a device but couldn’t one be made portable, and the electronics could be a simple low powered sweep generator that would activate portable phone circuitry. The rf power of such devices is low enough to cause no harm to humans. Of course they might have to make a small shielded cabinet to store the receivers in during the course of a trial.
[3] [i]Harvey[/i],
Having worked in high end secure facilitites during my time in the Navy, which included such workspaces, I should think that a room constructed as a simplified version of a Faraday box would not be all that expensive, especially if one were to simply retrofit the interior of an existing room, at least for one sufficient to block transmission and reception by commercial wireless devices. Those devices are, to the best of my understanding, relatively low-powered. Is there something I am failing to grasp? Of course, unless the jury is sequestered, there are always evenings and weekends.
Of course, there is always the question of whether such judicial rules, effectively requiring the jury to be the object of [i]enforced ignorance[/i] of any law with which they are not already familiar, are appropriate—a matter called into question by supporters of [i]jury nullification[/i]. Personally, I believe that the juror is the trier of both the fact and the law. That means that I, living in Washington State, which has a mandatory oath for jurors that commits the juror to rule exclusively on the question of guilt or innocence based exclusively on the instructions of the presiding judge, I am bound by conscience to refuse taking the oath as a juror.
Blessings and regards,
Keith Toepfer