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Twittering jurors get disconnected
TWITTERING JURORS have been told to refrain from using social networks and all kinds of electronic communications devices while on jury duty.
The guidance has been issued by the Administrative Offices of the US Courts after last week five jurors in the embezzlement case of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon were found to have communicated through Facebook, with one having received the opinion of another Facebook friend. Lawyers in that case have petitioned for a retrial.
Along with social notworking and information services such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Youtube all mentioned by name in the US federal court guidance, devices such as Blackberrys and Iphones were also fingered. The general rule states that no independent research should be conducted using those devices or services.
The idea that any of the aforementioned services could deliver anything of value to jury members is highly questionable, but we guess that's precisely the point. Not at all surprisingly, judges are merely insisting that jurors must only be influenced by the evidence and arguments presented in court. µ
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Hollywood would have a field day when policies and laws on crimes, are re-enacted on TV and gets tied in with public referendums!? The voting results would determine the judgement on real trials!!?
That's what I find disturbing, and the many TV viewers wanting a disturbing fictitious justice system brought to reality, totally open to opinionated mob mentality.
Every crime that you can think of has already been committed. Not to be confused with the futures still new and different plot lines that leads to a set of repeated crimes. What is the proof? "Crime percentage is going down" a statement rammed down our throats a crime by itself while the law books are written with disappearing ink. Point is if crime is going down, then all sets of possible crimes should have been produced already.
That said, there is no need to open trials in referendums but of course that's not the point. It's "what the people wants" (quoted by the people) is the point of the people.
The people of many has stopped to read and has found wanting to judge. Self judgement has failed over and over, are we ready for what the last draw will bring on? Hold on to the ringing gunshot sound coming from the wood slap of a gavel.
That is not the question of this issue. The issue is that jurors were caught communicating with people outside the trial, something that they are definitely not supposed to do.
A retrial is thus necessary in order to preserve the pursuit of justice.
I agree that those of the jury caught communicating with third parties about the trial should at least be reprimanded and preferably fined for the time wasted by their fault.
However, I am not sure that I want to see real-time court transmissions. On the other hand, we already have real-time transmission of Chamber of Deputies sessions and nobody actually watches that anyway, apart from the aspiring journalists that finally got off the dead dog column, so maybe I'm worried over nothing.
That way we can see if the justice guys are doing their jobs correctly, it would make corruption harder etc.
Jury decisions should be public too. They should be recorded and analysed for "common sense", and to check if that death penalty is really deserved based on the facts or just gut instinct and they want to hurry it up and agree.
I'm a reasonable guy, but I believe the idiots who pull this shit should be charged with obstruction of justice (or whatever the correct statute is). Do they not understand how this undermines our justice system?