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Tuesday, March 17, 2009

This Will Become A Major Problem

Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the Internet, directly violating the judge's instructions and centuries of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury, he got an even bigger shock.

Eight other jurors had been doing the same thing. The federal judge, William J. Zloch, had no choice but to declare a mistrial, wasting eight weeks of work by federal prosecutors and defense lawyers.

1 comment:

  1. Wow, this is a very interesting turn of events. The ease of gathering information, any information is at one's fingetips. Isn't this what the lawyers have to do anyway? The jurors hear the other side from the other lawyer, the only difference is both lawyers will now have to refute and deprogram misinformation that jurors may see on the interent.

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