Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Jurors in Trial of Baltimore Mayor Friend Each Other on Facebook

Judges confounded by jury's access to cyberspace, Baltimore Sun, Dec. 13, 2009:

On Friday, lawyers for Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon asked for a new trial in part because five of the jurors who convicted her of embezzlement Dec. 1 were communicating among themselves on Facebook during the deliberations period - and at least one of them received an outsider's online opinion of what the verdict should be. The "Facebook Friends," as Dixon's lawyers call them in court documents, became a clique that the lawyers argue altered jury dynamics.
The article discusses a number of cases affected by jurors who go online.
Concern has grown so much nationwide that legal experts, including in Maryland, are rewriting model jury instructions to specifically tell jurors that online searches, texting and social media - the things they routinely do on laptops, cell phones and BlackBerrys - are out. Maryland's rules are expected to be published next year, and the ones on that subject are still being drafted.

1 comment:

Dr. Richard Waites said...

Thank you for this posting. Clearly, jurors' use of social media to conduct research about a case is causing quite a stir. Kansas, Colorado, New Jersey state or federal courts allow it. Georgia and other states do not. Post trial jury interviews show that despite court admonitions, jurors want to know everything they can about a case in order to make a decision they can be proud of. An admirable goal no doubt. As in the case of other jury trial innovations, we are likely headed toward eventually accepting this tendency of jurors since it is compulsive behavior that is not likely to cease with court instructions. Instead of trying to cure the problem with an instruction, we might try a brief training or orientation session with jurors to quell their desire to look for outside information. We would also be well advised to conduct advance research on the Web to identify the information and sources of information about the case that appear on the Web in order to see it before jurors do and deal with it directly in court.