Legal News

A research published recently has said that a quarter of jurors in England and Wales currently were not able to imbibe the restrictions on internet use during trial.
Most of them, 16%, wrongly believe they were not even allowed to check emails while they were doing jury service, alarmingly, 5% believed that there were no restrictions at all on internet use during a trial while 2% believed they can look for information about a case so long as they don’t let it affect their judgment.
Jurors were routinely told that they must not do their own research on the cases they were trying. Last year, a juror was given six months' imprisonment because she had searched online for information about the defendant. But jurors were perfectly free to check their emails and conduct other business online when they were not sitting in court or deliberating.
Professor Cheryl Thomas director of jury project at the University College London Law faculty has obtained the figures and her team interviews 239 jurors immediately after they had returned verdicts in 20 different cases tried in London over the past year or so.
Contrary to popular myth, such research is not prohibited by the Contempt of Court Act 1981 — which applies only to jurors' "deliberations".
Thomas says it demonstrates that decisions about jury trial in the internet age should be based on pragmatic evidence absence of which led to two extreme divisive opinions positions – both of which cannot be justified.
Critics of jury trial argue that it is impossible to stop jurors gathering information from the internet and those who are opposed to media restrictions argue that jury must by trusted to decide cases on evidence.
Thomas says blindly trusting jury was not only unwise but it was also not what the juries themselves would want. The research points out to the jurors who clearly want more and better guidance to do their job; they are clear of what they want and are clear that they want it in written form.
Every single juror who received written directions from the judge has found it helpful and of those who did not 85 percent said they would have liked them. But a large proportion, 82%, disturbingly, said they would have liked more guidance on how to conduct their deliberations figure which has gone up from 67% in 2010, when Thomas last researched the issue.
Asked what sort of guidance they needed, jurors mentioned advice on what to do if they were confused about a legal issue; how to ensure that no one was pressured into giving a verdict; and what to do if something goes wrong.
The way forward would clearly be to provide jurors with the documents and support they need to reach a true verdict Thomas says.