It couldn't happen here, could it? The London Daily Mail reports:
A convicted rapist was freed from jail after it was discovered a juror had been doodling during his week-long trial.
The juror made two sketches of the judge while he should have been concentrating on the evidence.
As the proud curator of the American Gallery of Juror Art, I'm struggling with this story. Jurors can't doodle? What about counting the tiles on the ceiling, tracking the number of times defense counsel wears the same shoes, checking the second hand of the courtroom clock against their watches, planning their holiday outfits? Jurors are bored, bored, bored, and if we're going to start overturning verdicts because a juror's attention wandered, we really ought to shut down the prisons right now.
It had to be the underwear
So I've decided not to believe it was the juror's sketches that botched this conviction. I've decided the final straw was the jury's experiments with women's underwear. In England, they're called knickers:
The trial hinged on the victim's pink knickers which were torn in three places, and formed a major exhibit in the case.
It was [when the defendant was to be sentenced] that the judge revealed that a juror had asked an usher at the end of the trial on Friday to dispose of a pack of women's pants.
The judge said: "They bought a pack of five knickers.
"One is torn. They had been trying the strength of knickers and comparing them with knickers in this case.
"The juror said they had been conscientious, but they decided the case on evidence not before the court."
Juror artists, keep drawing. You're doing great work.
(Image by Ben Britten at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tauntingpanda/731940008/; license details there.)
