SAN FRANCISCO — Enough with the tweets, the blogs, the Internet searches.
That’s the message from courts across the country as jurors using their portable electronic devices continue to cause mistrials, overturned convictions and chaotic delays in court proceedings.
The rules for jury service in state and federal courts alike are evolving to grapple with this 21st century issue. New jury instructions are being adopted, and electronics are being banned from courtrooms.
In January, the federal court’s top administrative office, the Judicial Conference of the United States, issued so-called Twitter instructions to every federal judge, which are designed to be read to jurors at the start of the trial and before deliberations.
“You may not use any electronic device or media” in connection with the case, the recommended federal instructions say. They also bar visits to “any Internet chat room, blog or website such as Facebook, My Space, LinkedIn, YouTube or Twitter.”
The guidelines were developed “to address the increasing incidence of juror use of such devices as cellular telephones or computers to conduct research on the Internet or communicate with others about cases,” according to a memo to federal judges from the committee’s chief, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson of Topeka, Kan.
“Such use,” the judge noted, “has resulted in mistrials, exclusion of jurors, and imposition of fines.”
Although federal judges can ignore those guidelines, some state judges are not so free.
The Supreme Court in Michigan ordered judges there to order jurors to refrain from using cellphones, computers and other electronic devices to discuss cases before them.
Courts from Fort Wayne, Ind., to sparsely populated Malheur County in eastern Oregon have gone so far as to completely ban electronic devices.
“The thing that makes the electronic media issue a little different is that it so accessible and anonymous,” said Greg Hurley, an analyst at the National Center for State Courts. “Jurors face exposure if they go to the library or drive by a crime scene — but there’s little risk in going online.”
Related
Cases affected by jurors’ online activity include:
• Last year, a San Francisco Superior Court judge dismissed 600 potential jurors after several acknowledged going online to research the criminal case before them.
• Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon challenged her misdemeanor embezzlement conviction after discovering five jurors “friended” one another on Facebook during the trial.
• A federal judge in Florida declared a mistrial after eight jurors admitted Web surfing about a drug case.
