[During the week of July 6-10, I reported for jury duty in my county.  I will obviously not post about any substantive issues (I'm not silly enough to Twitter pictures like Al Roker or give updates on a trial on my Facebook page!)  But, a lot of us are interested in the process of jury service, and I'm enjoying the "fly on the wall" experience, so I thought I would share thoughts when appropriate.  Unfortunately, I have no substance to leak -- I was never even chosen for a panel.  As a big law geek, I was very disappointed.]

Jury duty here seems fairly humane, we meet at 9:30 the first day, but after that we check in electronically at night to see if we are needed the next day, and at what time.  This beats sitting around for hours, so that's good.  Over the course of the week, I am only "called in" on Wednesday, at which time half of us are put on a panel, and the other half is released.  In essence, my jury service consisted of an orientation and dialing in to a call-in number.  So, I'll blog about orientation! 

During orientation, we're given recorded audio information from a judge and from the head of security at the courthouse.  (In 1999, a man threw a firebomb into a courtroom; luckily, no one was seriously injured, but everyone remembers it.)  So, if you had to provide a 15-minute overview to jurors about jury duty, what would you include?  According to a colleague, the debate over what to put in these orientation videos is fairly robust -- it's an important problem. 

First and foremost, you want jurors to feel good about their service, so you can't treat them as potential firebombers or Al Rokers.  So, the safety information (basically, what you can't bring into the courthouse) is framed as being in the jurors' interest.  So, no one can bring in a cell phone.  Not because we think you will text anyone sensitive information or taint the jury pool.  This is so no one can take your picture and compromise your safety.  (Funnily enough, no one said we couldn't bring in a camera, and they specifically said laptops were ok, and I saw a juror with a Nintendo DSi, which can take pictures.) 

The most interesting part for me came when the judge was trying to tell potential jurors that we could not conduct our own independent investigations, and that's the part I most want to post about.  I am told that courthouses struggle with what information to put in these orientation videos (audio in our case).  At some point, information can become too much information, and sometimes telling jurors what not to do gives them ideas they didn't have!  Another issue is what information to give the jury pool as a whole, and what information to give only once a jury is empaneled.  And apparently the Internet has blown this issue wide open.  I looked on the web and saw discussions about whether jurors should specifically be instructed not to Twitter, not to use Facebook, not to Google the attorneys and parties in the case, and not to use Wikipedia.  This NYT article gives a good picture at modern-day juror problems in our technological era.  In Champaign, we were told not to read the "court" section of the local paper, which seems so 20th Century!

OK, so how is the court supposed to broach the subject of independent investigation?  Now, with the advent of the Internet, jurors who ordinarily wouldn't bother to go look at a crime scene or otherwise retrace investigation steps might want to look up facts about scientific evidence, backgrounds of witnesses, maps of locations, anything!  Of course, the real reason that juror investigations are not allowed is we don't trust jurors to conduct thorough and valid investigations and research!  OK, that's not going to go over well on a jury orientation video.  The other, even less generally satisfying explanation is the system relies on the two parties to bring in all evidence, which is vetted by a judge according to the rules of evidence, and jurors have to work with the facts they are given, however limited.  Again, that 30-second explanation is not going to go over well.  So, how do you frame this warning so that (1) jurors aren't insulted; (2) jurors don't get the sense that "the system" is completely screwed up;  and (3) you don't give people ideas they wouldn't have thought about?

Well, our judge even said that she had given a lot of thought on how to describe the juror's role.  When she explained why jurors should not conduct independent investigations, she gave two examples, which I could see being completely dismissed by certain types of jurors.  In her first example, she stated that jurors shouldn't go look at an intersection that is the subject of a car accident case.  The reason given was that the intersection may have changed.  Really?  How often do intersections change?  I guess the lighting, the foliage, the traffic density may be different, but she didn't really say that.  I can see a juror saying, "Well, I know that this intersection hasn't changed in the past three years, so I'm going to go take a look at it." 

The other example she used attempted to tiptoe into the "Internet problem," which the more I think about it is huge and only going to get worse.  She said that in a trial, you might hear scientific evidence and have more questions, so you may be tempted to get on the Internet to find out more information.  But, she said, this is not allowed because, among other reasons, we all know that anyone can put anything on the Internet, so you never know what information is there.  Again, I can see a juror saying, "Well, I'll just go to a trusted site, like the CDC."  She didn't specifically mention the rules of evidence, although she tried to give an "I know your pain" story by saying that in bench trials, she sometimes has a lot of questions, but she can't do her own independent investigation either.  (But of course, she knows what evidence was excluded and why, and she can call for briefings/hearings.)

And of course, this admonition never got into the don't Tweet, don't Facebook, don't Google the parties, don't use Wikipedia when you want to know something; don't use Google maps to see how far apart things are, etc.  Maybe it's best to keep it short and sweet, but I just wonder if "don't use the internet to research scientific evidence" doesn't leave open all these other opportunities.  And, if you've never thought about the rules of evidence, couldn't you completely innocently think, "You know, they never have said anything about the background of the defendant.  I'm going to Google him just to see what kind of person he is."  Wow.

How will this change trial procedure?  More instructions?  Shorter trials, so jurors can't go home and surf the net?  More sequestration?

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