Lawyer And Juries In The Information Age
The judicial modalities of the western world are based on a jury
, which makes a collective decision with regards to the cases being heard in the court. The jury comprises of twelve people, who are considered to be ignorant with regards to the contents of the ongoing case. This is especially important so as to avoid the juries making partial decisions based on the information available outside, instead of considering the facts and evidence provided by the lawyers. Therefore, the jury members in charge of a particular case are asked not to do any outside research about the case or the people involved.
However, in the age where information is widely and extremely easily available, keeping facts and figures under wraps from the jury members is increasingly becoming an impossible task. It has now been seen as a threat to the fairness of the ongoing cases if a jury member goes home and conducts his or her own research with regards to the case they are involved in. the information available to the jury is, therefore, against the safeguards as set by the judicial system.
Today, lawyers aren't the sole members of a courtroom that are doing "discovery " practices. The primary concern that lawyers have in modern ages is that members of a jury will do their own research to find out info vital to an lawyer's case and come to conclusions without considering the proof in the courtroom. As an example, a juror will look up info about a lawyer's outstanding witness and make judgments based primarily on info not intended by the lawyer to be divulged. It is as if keeping jurors blind to outside info is an impossible job.
Then again, in the age where most information is available online, the validity and authenticity of the information at the disposal of the jury online is also questionable. Further, if the jury bases their decision on the information that is available online, the judgment passed might not be fair at all. In addition to the information that the jury may access at home, accessing the net through their cell phones during the trial itself also poses gravity towards the case.
At the beginning of the case, the courts give prior instructions to the jury to not perform their own research with regards to the case. In addition to the information available on the internet, jury is instructed to even not pay heed to the information that is presented in the media and press. However, with the abundance and ease of the availability of the information around you, keeping the jury away from it all becomes a tough job. For the same, these days lawyers themselves are taking steps to ensure that they are ready for the problems that might be posed due to the information that the jury is equipped with.
Barristers may explain themselves to jurors that info found online can't always be backed up and only facts presented in court should be considered. Also, lawyers are doing checks on members of a jury to see whether they blog or continually "tweet " on Twitter. If this is so he may suggest to a judge that all these actions are halted for the period of a trial. While these actions might not always work for an
lawyer, so they must always be ready to counterbalance in an example where a juror's violates trust.
by: Rodney Acosta.
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