One of Mark Stein's terrific missives from the Conrad Black closing arguments in Chicago this week was this:
One lady juror appears to be reading. A book? The paper? Her bus ticket? This blog?
If it's the last, hi there, the pink really suits you, free for a drink at lunchtime?
He was kidding, but it's not absolutely impossible. We've talked about jurors who write blogs; recent stories from New Jersey and California remind us that jurors also read them.
Blogs about jurors reading blogs about jurors . . .
In New Jersey, lawyers for murder defendant Melanie McGuire failed to convince the trial judge that she should get a new trial because the case was so heavily covered, in blogs as well as traditional media. The news stories suggest that the jurors were deeply aware of the coverage, but the trial judge said he was satisfied they weren't tainted. Kevin O'Keefe at Real Lawyers Have Blogs pointed to a good local pre-hearing article, and there's a shorter post-hearing article linking to some of the trial blogs in question.
In California, the trial in question started in April and is still going on. It's a criminal fraud trial over the collapse of Peregrine Systems, a software developer; three executives and the company's (former) Arthur Andersen accountant face charges. Local lawyer Robert Grimes is posting detailed daily reports on the trial at his web site -- having been "hired to write the blog," says the San Diego Union Tribune, by a law firm that is involved in civil litigation over the Peregrine mess. (First I've heard of lawyers anonymously hiring trial bloggers. That raises interesting issues.)
Jurors reporting jurors who read blogs . . .
The Peregrine prosecutors, and apparently some other jurors, were concerned about Juror No. 7 already. Back in June (I'm getting all this from the Union Tribune article), jurors sent out a note which prompted the judge to ask No. 7 if he had read about the case on the Internet; he said he'd looked to see if there was media coverage, but didn't read any. On Tuesday another note came out, saying No. 7 had called the case "B.S." and a waste of time. Questioned again by the judge, No. 7 admitted he had read Grimes's blog, and he was gone.
"The move could represent a setback for defense lawyers," said the Union Tribune, "as the juror often nodded and smiled during their cross-examination of witnesses called by prosecutors." But there may have been a symmetry in the ruling. Defense lawyers got a ruling preventing five witnesses from testifying -- because they had read Grimes's blog.
Ask. Instruct. Remind. Repeat.
The moral is, as it so often is, ask and ask, instruct and instruct. Remember especially that many jurors can get to blogs -- and the rest of the Internet -- from the jury room itself, not just from home. Remind them that news means all news.
Defense counsel, let them hear it from you too. You don't want your juror advocate to be sent home because he thought reading blogs would be a great way to stick it to the government.
