Hannaford-Agor et al.: Jurors and Jury Use of New Media: A Baseline Exploration

Paula Hannaford-Agor, JD, MPP, Dr. David Rottman, and Dr. Nicole Waters, all of the National Center for State Courts, presented a paper entitled Jurors and Jury Use of New Media: A Baseline Exploration, at ICLS 2012: International Conference on Law and Society, held 5-8 June 2012 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.

Here is the abstract:

The incidence of juror use of advanced communications technologies to conduct independent research on trial-related issues and to communicate with others about the trial while it is underway is a source of increasing concern about the fairness of jury verdicts. In the past two years, at least 90 court opinions have been published addressing allegations of juror misconduct, of which 28 of the verdicts were ultimately overturned. In this paper, the Center for Jury Studies at the National Center for State Courts describes the results of a pilot test of survey instruments and study protocols conducted in 2011 to document the frequency of juror and jury use of new media and its impact on trial deliberations and verdicts. The pilot study sample consisted of completed study packages from 9 civil trials and 6 criminal trials. Six trial judges form 5 states (California, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan, and Texas) participated in the pilot study. Case types included in the pilot study included manslaughter, robbery/theft, drug offenses, sexual assault, and firearm offenses (criminal trials), and automobile tort and dram shop claims (civil trials). Overall, the NCSC obtained very high response rates and good compliance with the study protocols. The surveys of judges and lawyers focused on case and trial characteristics, and opinions about the severity of problems related to juror use of new media. The pilot test also recorded baseline information from more than 500 prospective jurors in those jurisdictions about jurors’ access to contemporary communication technologies, their awareness of restrictions on use of those technologies, and interest in using those technologies during trial and deliberations. Among the key findings from the pilot study were the following:

• Judges and attorneys view juror Internet use as a moderately severe problem.
• Jurors and prospective jurors view themselves as technologically knowledgeable and the overwhelming majority had daily, if not immediate, access to the Internet through a variety of communication devices. This level of access and usage is comparable to national surveys of adult Internet use.
• Most jurors correctly understood judicial admonitions concerning Internet use by jurors, but sizeable minorities either misunderstood or were unsure about those admonitions.
• Sizeable proportions of jurors said that they would have wanted to use the Internet to conduct case-related research or communicate with family and friends. No difference in juror interest levels expressed between civil and criminal trials.
• A small number of jurors and alternates reported that they engaged in “old-fashioned” misconduct (discussions with other jurors, with family/friends), but none of the misconduct involved Internet use. Four jurors in 4 separate trials reported that they relied moderately heavily on information obtained through misconduct.

The paper concludes with suggestions to modify the study methods to address inherent limitations in the methodological approach adopted for the pilot test.

For the full text of the paper, please contact the authors.

Summary of Feb. 18 ABA Conference on Public Understanding of the Courts in the Age of New Media

A summary of the ABA Conference on Public Understanding of the Courts in the Age of New Media, held 18 February 2011 at The University of Arizona School of Law’s Rehnquist Center, has been posted by Tim Eigo, Esq., of Arizona Attorney magazine.

The summary includes a selection of Twitter tweets about the conference, marked by hashtags #barmedia and #newmediaconf.

HT @christinemartin.

Browning, The Lawyer’s Guide to Social Networking

John G. Browning, Esq. of Thompson Coe has published The Lawyer’s Guide to Social Networking: Understanding Social Media’s Impact on the Law (Thomson Reuters West 2010). Here is a summary:

This product provides a comprehensive look at how social media is affecting the legal system. It examines the myriad ways in which information from sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter is being put to use in everything from criminal and family law matters to personal injury, employment, and commercial cases nationwide. The author illustrates how the pervasive social networking phenomenon is redefining traditional notions of jurisdiction, duty, service of process, and legal ethics while using actual trial- and appellate-level cases to analyze the discoverability and admissibility of social media evidence.

Haralambousa on Educating Jurors: Technology, the Internet & the Jury System

Nicola Haralambous, LL.M., of University of Hertfordshire School of Law has published Educating Jurors: Technology, the Internet & the Jury System, Information and Communications Technology Law, v. 19, no. 3 (2010), pp. 255-266. Here is the abstract:

This paper explores two ways in which the Internet and technology impact upon the jury trial. The first issue concerns jurors’ improper use of the Internet to conduct research into the case they are hearing and the improper use of social networking websites. It is important to minimise the prejudicial effect that the introduction of extraneous material might have on the legitimacy of the verdict and the integrity of the jury system in the Internet age. This paper argues that more needs to be done to educate jurors about their role and the importance of abiding by judicial directions. The second issue concerns the positive impact that the use of technology may have in court as a tool to aid jury comprehension. Further research is required into measures which may be taken in order to accommodate the increase in use of technology and the Internet within today’s jury system.

Hoffmeister on Jurors in the Digital Age

Professor Thaddeus Hoffmeister of the University of Dayton School of Law has posted a paper entitled Jurors in the Digital Age. Here is the abstract:

Improper use of new technology by jurors inside and outside the courtroom has become so pervasive that commentators have coined new phrases to describe it: “Google Mistrials,” the “Twitter Effect,” and “Internet-Tainted Jurors.” Yet, despite the attention garnered, there has been little legal scholarship on this topic. The articles that have touched on the issue primarily focus on the benefits of technology and how it can be harnessed to aid in juror comprehension. This dearth of academic writing may be due in large part to the fact that the Digital Age is fairly new and still evolving and juror misconduct has historically been an under examined area of the law. This article attempts to fill that void by analyzing the detrimental impact of the Digital Age on sitting jurors and whether it can be lessened. While many of the issues examined in this article apply equally to civil cases, the primary focus of this article is on jurors deciding criminal cases.

The article begins, in Part I, by discussing the influence of the Digital Age on juror: (1) research; (2) communications; and (3) privacy. In Part II, the article analyzes possible ways in which to limit the negative impact of new technology on these three areas. While there is no panacea for these problems, this article focuses on several reform measures that could address and possibly reduce the detrimental effects of the Digital Age on jurors. The three proposed remedies are as follows: (1) improving juror instructions; (2) allowing jurors to ask questions; and (3) disclosing juror information to the opposing party. In Part III, the article goes on to examine what might occur if the aforementioned remedies are not implemented or prove ineffective. Specifically, the article suggests that the courts may, in the future, increase juror penalties and limit access to jurors.

As part of the research for this article, this author conducted the first-ever survey (“Jury Survey”) on jury service in the Digital Age. The Jury Survey Questions went to federal judges, prosecutors, and public defenders. The questions focused primarily on juror research but briefly touched upon juror communications and privacy. The purpose of the Jury Survey was twofold: (1) to discover from those who work with the legal system on a daily basis their views on the jury reform proposals suggested by this article; and (2) to learn about other possible reform measures. Of particular note, the Jury Survey Respondents, like this author, believe that improved and updated jury instructions are the best approach to combat online research and improper communications by jurors. In contrast, a significant number of Jury Survey Respondents doubted whether allowing jurors to ask questions would decrease the likelihood of juror research and communications to third parties. This article suggests the opposite and strongly encourages the use of juror questions.

HT @TheJuryExpert.

Rose et al. on Jurors’ Attention to the “Offstage” of Trials

Professor Mary R. Rose of the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and Department of Sociology, and colleagues, have published Goffman on the Jury: Real Jurors’ Attention to the “Offstage” of Trials, forthcoming in Law and Human Behavior. Here is the abstract:

“Social psychologist Erving Goffman, in his classic work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, provides a framework that explains why jurors may turn their attention at the courthouse to information not formally presented from the witness stand. We dub this ‘offstage observation,’ a type of juror behavior that has not been systematically examined empirically. Analyzing a unique data source of 50 actual jury deliberations in civil trials, we find that jurors do look to the offstage in evaluating the claims of the parties. However, in contrast to predictions, these observations played a surprisingly minor role in the jury deliberation process.”