Other countries seem to be a lot tougher on jurors who don't pay attention.
You've seen this story already if you read Above The Law, or How Appealing, or Blonde Justice, or any number of news services. An Australian drug conspiracy trial had been going for three months, with more than 100 witnesses having already testified, at an estimated cost of nearly $1 million U.S. dollars, and the trial judge chucked the whole thing because five jurors admitted they were playing Sudoku when they should have been listening to evidence.
If this sounds familiar, maybe you're remembering a post here last August, about a British rape conviction that was thrown out partly because a juror was doodling. I kind of liked my line at the time: "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?"
Across the pond
In this country, we're more tolerant of juror distraction. In the Seventh Circuit, you can start a criminal investigation of the jurors while the trial is going on and the guilty verdict will still stand, or at least former Illinois governor George Ryan's did.
Sudoku is distracting and addictive, there's no question. It's worse than doodling, and a judge who learns it is contaminating the jury box should put a stop to it. And you never know; if you've lost the jury to a Sudoku tournament, go ahead and move for a mistrial. But you might find yourself wishing you lived in Australia -- or had found a way to rest your case before you hit the three-month mark.
(Photo by Tim Psych at http://www.flickr.com/photos/01-17-05_t-m-b/2156513671/; license details there.)
