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Friday, July 31, 2009

Ind. Courts - "Texting, tweeting tempt jurors, frustrate judges"

An AP story appearing today in the Miami Herald (and a number of Indiana papers), by Charles Wilson, picks up on this ILB entry from July 27th:

Friday, an Indiana Supreme Court committee took up the issue of banning iPhones, cell phones, laptops, social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook, by jurors while they are deliberating a case.
The AP story begins:
INDIANAPOLIS -- Jurors are warned not to discuss trials with outsiders or investigate evidence on their own, but texting, Twitter and Google are making it increasingly hard for judges to enforce that rule.

An Indiana judicial panel is investigating what can be done about the problem, just a month after the Michigan Supreme Court issued a rule sharply restricting the use of electronic devices by jurors in that state's courts.

The Indiana Judicial Conference's jury committee assigned staff last week to draft a rule setting uniform limits on jurors' use of electronic devices during deliberations. The rule is scheduled to be presented in October.

Last month, the Indiana Supreme Court decided a civil case in which a juror accepted a phone call during deliberations. The verdict was allowed to stand, but not without a stern warning from Justice Brent Dickson.

Allowing jurors to keep cell phones or other devices, he wrote, is "fraught with significant potential problems impacting the fair administration of justice."

Worse problems have arisen elsewhere as jurors become increasingly wired. In Florida, a federal judge declared a mistrial in a drug trial in March after learning that nine jurors had done online research about the case.

Also in March, an Arkansas judge turned down a request for a new trial after a building materials company and its owner appealed a $12.6 million verdict against them, alleging that during the trial a juror posted Twitter messages that showed bias. And in England, a woman reportedly was dismissed from a jury after she asked people on Facebook how she should vote.

More from the story:
In Indiana, local judges set their own policies and there is no statewide consensus, said Hamilton Superior Court Judge Bill Hughes, chairman of the jury committee whose members are appointed by Chief Justice Randall Shepard. A majority of judges do have bailiffs take phones from jurors during deliberations, he said.

In the case decided by the Indiana Supreme Court, a juror got the bailiff to stand with her while she accepted a cell phone call about a class during deliberations.

"The best practice is for trial courts to discourage, restrict, prohibit, or prevent access to mobile electronic communication devices by all persons except officers of the court during all trial proceedings, and particularly by jurors during jury deliberation," Dickson wrote in the June ruling.

Problems aren't limited to deliberations, or even the courtroom, experts say. Jurors are rarely sequestered, and curious jurors may not realize that doing an Internet search on a defendant's name or looking up a crime scene on Mapquest on their home computer could violate court rules about seeking evidence independently.

"Even in the course of the trial, if jurors access different things on the Internet they can potentially base their decision on something other than what was presented at trial," said Joel Schumm, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis.

"I think there has to be a warning to the jurors that they not do any outside research, because people are curious," he said.

The Justice Dickson opinion referenced is the case of Henri v. Curto, June 17th and discussed in this ILB entry.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 31, 2009 03:32 PM
Posted to Indiana Courts