Juror "googled" case into a mistrial

By Vijeta Kadarmandalgi

(© 2009 The Associated Press.)
According to an article in the New York Times, about two weeks ago, a juror in a high-profile drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had done personal research on this case on the Internet, while serving as a juror. This is a direct violation of the legal rules about being a juror. But, the bigger shock, was finding out that eight other jurors had done the same thing. The judge, William Zloch was forced to declare a mistrial on a case that had been going on for aobut eight weeks.

According to the Times article, the use of Blackberrys, iPhones, the Internet is not allowed and is wreaking havoc on trials around the nation, forcing judges to declare mistrials. According to the law, jurors are not supposed to have any knowledge of any information about the case not presented in court.

Jurors are requird to reach a verdict based on the facts that the judge has deemed admissible in court. The jurors are not supposed to be swayed by any outside information but, with the current technology, jurors can send and recieve information about a case with the touch of a button leaving judges and lawyers frustrated.

- It is hard to monitor jurors at all times because with the Internet readily available on cell phones, jurors can "Google" and "tweet" during their bathroom breaks. When this happens, is this a violation of the defendant's sixth amendment - right to a fair trial?

- If the juror "tweets" and "facebooks" private information about the defendant during the trial, can the juror be sued for defamation? Technically, the definition of defamation is the dissemination of any embarrassing information to anyone but the person the information is about.