http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/finding-untainted-jurors-in-the-age-of-the-internet/
I found an article that was extremely interesting to me. When taking into the account of having an unbiased judgement in court it's difficult to do with how media coverage is so wide spread, esepcially through the internet. They talked about how people would ask for change of venue when they were going to trial because the community knew too much about the case and they wanted a more fair trial, well that all sounds good for them to get a new venue, but in reality all you have to do is type in a person on google and you can get all sorts of information. This article made me think of the Mark Becker case, because how could anyone in the state of Iowa not have some sort of bias about him especially since Ed Thomas was a very well known man.
This is kind of a neat article. I think it is something that most people do not think about too often but is really quite an important situation. Picking a jury is important, because it can have a real impact on how the defendant is treated. In a small community, where a crime is issued, this is a can present a problem. We have talked about how people can be influenced by suggestions, and if a beloved member of the community was the victim, or a similar situation, and just by linking the defendants name to that person, could prove to be traumatic. So picking a jury becomes very important.
http://www.nlrg.com/jrsd/aba-article.htm
Above, is a link to how you can should pick a jury, something which is very important to lawyers. However, in response to the blog, I personally do not think the internet will be as much of a factor as this article implies. It is one thing to have knowledge about a case, and another to have personal feelings about it. The cases mentioned in the article all seem to be influenced by a particular community being impacted tremendously by the crime. However, if the internet material that they read is completely biased, and influences jurors in that aspect, it could be a problem. People just need to be educated on the reliability of various internet sources.
This is an interesting point. It is ignorant to say that it would be possible to keep jurors shielded from outside opinion (especially media) if they are asked to be on the bench for a particular case. This is even more true if the case they are asked to sit for is high profile. The courts can attempt to shield the jurors from some outside influence, but will be unable to realistically do this with the level of technology, especially considering most cell phones have instant internet access now.
While I do think this is a cause for concern and that some action can and should be taken in the more extreme cases, I also believe it is unavoidable as technology will always continue to advance. Despite this view, we must also remember that jurors are intelligent people and hopefully are able to separate media speculation versus the facts they are presented with during the trial.
This paper examines the effect of media on juries by examining different research:
http://www.sentry.org/~trev/essays/essay01-2.html
I thought it was interesting look and certainly calmed my fears about all juries being at the mercy of the media in the future. I'm sure previous societies had the same concerns when newspapers, radio, and tv were first made available to a wide audience.
I like what the other posters had to say on this subject. It seems very well informed, and I wanted to make a couple of question-like statements.
In regards to small communities forming their juries, I completely agree it almost always leads to a guilty verdict for an outsider. We've seen this both in movies and history. Since we can pull up the news in a moment’s notice, anyone's documented business can easily become everyone's business. Pulling jurors from other counties would seem to alleviate this issue a little more, but if they were informed of the case at all (by means of the potential juror asking why they are being a juror in another county), this could create issues as well. Another method of alleviating this issue is possibly include a section in the questionnaire the jury has to answer in regards to their knowledge of the case prior to the trial.
Personally, I really don't keep up with the news anymore. It's just a little too depressing for me, but I try to keep up in national or international current events. In the case of Irh's post, I have absolutely no clue who Mark Becker or Ed Thomas are. In that case, I'd probably make an excellent juror for. Then again, I'm still listed as a resident of Illinois.
I agree that this is the issue but I think that it is important to remember that the context of the situation has a lot to do with it. Coming from a small town I believe that this would absolutely be a problem because everyone talks about things when they happen and everyone knows about the whole situation. However living in a bigger place now I don't usually know what is going on unless it directly involves or affects me. I don't usually watch the news and I rarely ever read it on the internet. For example this article spoke mainly about the Enron case and I know of the company and vaguely what happened but the names and charges are all new to me. I think that this is a big problem but it is not affected by the internet the way this article suggests. I know that I can speak for the better part of my generation at least when I say that I am not likely to look up news and read about an incident unless it affects me personally one way or the other.