Rules for jurors

This being a record of a quick canter through the Internet this morning.

The canter was prompted by a short, truncated piece about a juror conducting online research in the print version of yesterday's Evening Standard.

The truncation being frustrating, I turned to the Internet to be taken to a service called pressreader which offers a facsimile of the article in question. The only complication being that it truncates one sentence earlier than my print version. Maybe they worked from a different edition. I have not bothered to investigate how far this pressreader service goes - for example which newspapers it covers - and whether I would be invited to contribute if I persisted with it.

The charge was that the juror conducted online research and so my next step was to ask the Internet about that. I did not turn up a juror manual, but I did turn up plenty of stuff and I include five of the more helpful offerings in the references below.

The story appears to be that jurors must come to their decision on the basis of the evidence presented in the court and of any directions that may have been given by the judge. I believe they are allowed to pass questions to the judge during their deliberations, although I have not found anything about that, beyond a suggestion that such questions are rather discouraged. So asking Bing or Google what they might know about a defendant is clearly out of order: such asking may well, for example, turn up stuff that has been explicitly excluded from the trial, say malicious gossip about a defendant by neighbours who loathe him for some unconnected reason or other.

There is plenty of stuff about how juries, possibly overwhelmed by information, might be better supported in their work.

And I dare say there are grey areas, such as possession of prior knowledge, not readily available to the public at large, which has a bearing on the case. Maybe candidate jurors with such knowledge are supposed to be disqualified or otherwise excused.

But the rule seems clear enough in practise. No poking around on your laptop, not even with the very best of intentions. Although I can see that no laptop at all for the duration might be a bit difficult for some people.

And I can see that some jurors might feel a bit frustrated. A juror who feels, for example, that the police or the lawyers have not done their work properly, and that some line of inquiry has been neglected. But here again the rule is clear enough: it is not for jurors to second guess that work. Their job is to come to a verdict on the basis of the work that has been done - not of that which has not been done. And if they are really unhappy, they always have the option of refusing to convict.

PS: I should say that I have never been a member of a jury.

References

Reference 1: https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/jury-foreman-sentenced-over-internet-research/5111157.article.

Reference 2: https://www.law.ac.uk/resources/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-jury-service/.

Reference 3: https://www.gov.scot/publications/methods-conveying-information-jurors-evidence-review/pages/2/.

Reference 4: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/juror-misconduct-offences.

Reference 5: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/juror-convicted-for-internet-research.