North Coast Connections: Juror blogs

I've been away ... did you miss me?? Yeah, right.

I've been seriously busy the past month +, which is a good thing from a business perspective. This usually means waaaay too much travel, but the work I do is very interesting and potentially quite beneficial for the courts. And while more than half of my contracts have the outward appearance of technology projects, they are almost all people projects in one way or another. But, hey, these are blog topics for another day. Today, I'll tell a story about the blogging jurors.

Once upon a time, jury service was a pretty straightforward endeavor. A pain in the ass, maybe, but straightforward. You got called for jury duty, came in, got qualified, got called into a courtroom where you were asked a lot of stupid questions, got picked to sit in a case, heard the evidence, deliberated with your fellow jurors and finally rendered a verdict.

Like every other aspect of our lives, technology has changed jury service. To the plus side, interacting with the court is a lot easier in those courts using web-based jury interfaces. Jurors can qualify for service, postpone duty, confirm whether they are called in on a given day, and even receive orientation. Some websites go so far as to have printable parking passes and bus passes.

Where technology tends to muck things up is when it interferes with what jurors are supposed to do. For instance, jurors are supposed to bring their life experience into deliberations, not independent research. If jurors have questions, need to see evidence or hear testimony repeated, they ask the judge who decides on a case-by-cases basis whether the request is reasonable. When jurors now bring smart phones into court, they are tempted to do Internet searches and look up issues without regard to whether doing so is appropriate.

Granted, trials are a lot more complicated nowadays involving scientific evidence, intellectual property, land use and a whole host of complex issues. But this is still the role of the attorneys to put on evidence, expert witnesses and arguments that explain the issues. The juror's role is determine fact ... did someone commit an act or omission? Was someone obligated to do something and didn't? Was there harm? If so how much and who is responsible?

TV and the entertainment business take liberties with how the justice system is supposed to work, so it’s no surprise jurors aren't clear about what they are supposed to do. After working in courts for more than 30 years, I will tell you that no one in the audience confesses during a jury trial, despite the dozens of Perry Mason episodes that show otherwise.

So what about the blogging jurors? It seems a Tampa area juror, who happened to also be a blogger, served on a jury in which he had a less than rewarding experience. In this particular case, the jury was not told of some aspects of the case because it was excluded from evidence. When he later researched the incident on the Internet and found out about the exclusion, he ranted about it in his blog. OK, so far? Well, now the defense counsel learns about the blog and makes a motion to call the juror in for questioning on the record about when and where he did the extracurricular research (in an attempt to seek a mistrial).

In another case, a juror waiting in the jury assembly room posts a blog opining about why she was chosen for jury duty in the first place, given her belief in God and respect for the police. Again, defense counsel finds out and asks the judge to throw out the conviction (which was denied).

It gets better ...

Juror X is in the hallway waiting to be questioned and placed on a jury trial and posts this juicy observation: "Looking down the hall, it's losers and lawyers as far as the eye can see," X wrote. "I really like the 'praying hands' tattoo on the side of Gang-Banger Three's neck."

When brought to the judge's attention, the juror is admonished to keep his pithy views to himself until after he completes his service.

So what's so different about posting blog comments and writing letters to the editor about personal views gained from jury service? There may be little difference, but in my experience people tend to be more expressive, opinionated and even over the top in emails and blogs even though one may be speaking on the record. It's something about the media that encourages people to let loose.

Anyway, it's nice to be back in town to enjoy this wonderful weather even if I still have tons of reports to write, conferences to plan for, and work to catch up on.

Blog long and prosper.

Chris Crawford
www.justiceserved.com

North Coast Connections

Thoughts and analysis on technology and life on the North Coast.

Juror blogs

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