IPhone + Encarta = New Trial
September 20th, 2010
A jury verdict was reversed earlier this month due to juror misconduct when the foreperson used his Iphone to look up the definition of “prudent” on Encarta during a break in the jury’s deliberations. In Tapanes v. State, 35 FLW D2031A (Fla 4 DCA 2010) the court wrote: “Although here we confront new frontiers in technology, that being the instant access to a dictionary by a smartphone, the conduct complained of by the appellant is not all novel or unusual. It has been a long-standing rule of law that jurors should not consider external information outside of the presence of the defendant, the state, and the trial court.” The court cited earlier Florida cases holding that a dictionary is not one of the materials permitted to be taken into the jury room. See, Smith v. State, 95 So. 2d 525 (Fla. 1957).
Entry Filed under: Deliberations,General Voir Dire,Juror Misconduct
2 Comments Add your own
1. Beth Leone Noble | March 8th, 2011 at 5:50 pm
And just think how much of this goes on in the jury room that we never, ever know about. Scary! My partner just did a blog about when she sat on a jury a few years back and how frustrating it was because no one was really followiing the law, just their passion… and that is something that you really cannot reason with.
2. Linda beaudry | July 6th, 2011 at 10:25 am
the Casey Anthony case has been decided in Florida with some non guilty and guilty votes, does anyone know what would happen if there was jury misconduct?
Outraged Mom
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed