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Google, Twitter and mistrials

By Mark Obbie

[Editor's note: This is the first of a series of guest posts by students in the Law, Politics, and Media course.]Imagine you're the plaintiff in a civil suit that's been ongoing for the past six weeks. The judge is about to announce the verdict and you picture yourself walking out of the courtroom wearing a big toothy grin, holding $10,000 in compensatory and special damages in hand. Just as the judge walks in, you and your lawyer glance at each other with a sly smile. But, wait -- the judge looks rather puzzled. 'I declare this a mistrial,' she says. 'One of the jurors Googled the defendant's name.  Another was sending something called ‘Tweets' to the entire World Wide Web last week. It's back to the drawing board.' Courts are beginning to face the problem of jurors using new technology such as Twitter, Wikipedia, and Google to do outside research or comment on cases they are sitting in. And the media are paying attention. A Google search for the term 'Google mistrial' yielded nearly 150,000 pages linking to blogs and news articles about the issue. According to this blog, just last week a building products company asked a court in Arkansas to overturn a $12.6 million judgment, claiming that a juror had used Twitter to send updates during the trial.John Schwartz's New York Times article said last week a juror on a big federal drug trial in Florida also confessed to using the Internet to do outside research on the case. Apparently, after the judge found out, he asked the other jurors sitting on the trial and discovered that they too just couldn't keep their hands off Facebook for a few weeks. Remedies such as sequestering juries can aid in keeping an impartial jury, especially on a high-profile case. But, now with more advance technologies such as the iPhone, jurors can have access to information with just a slight touch of a screen while taking a bathroom break, without anyone ever knowing. So, how do the courts reform to accommodate the ever-changing advances in the flow of information? As more media coverage surfaces, it perhaps will prompt statutes that address changes in technology that will be incorporated into jury instruction in the future.Jurors also have to take responsibility. Jurors need to realize they are serving a higher purpose for society in deciding a case that could potentially be used to decide similar cases in the future. They need to avoid the temptation of Googling and Tweeting, as hard as that may be in this day and age. Also, jurors need to check and balance one another. If they see the juror next to them discreetly browsing the Internet on their phone and 'just happen' to Google a defendant's name, they need to speak up.  The media can also serve the same purpose. I doubt any juror wants to see his name in the paper as, say, the 'guy who Tweeted and left a $12 million judgment to rot' in the headlines. -- Allison Tong

Full post as published by Lawbeat on March 19, 2009 (boomark / email).