Oregon Legal Research Blog
From a 1/25/12, Law in the News link, we travel to this story from England:
“Jurors: leave the information age—or go to jail,” by Peter Bright:
Excerpt: “An English court has sentenced a juror to six months in prison for contempt of court after she performed research on the Internet and forced the abandonment of a criminal trial.
Psychology lecturer Theodora Dallas, 34, was a member of the jury in the trial of Barry Medlock, accused of causing grievous bodily harm. She looked up certain information related to the trial on the Internet, came across information concerning Medlock, and told her fellow jurors what she had found. One of them informed the judge, causing the judge to abandon the trial. Medlock was later retried and found guilty….” [Link to full story.]
You can read more about juries in England and jury service and selection, which is random in the English Courts (unlike the U.S. Courts), which makes for faster trials, but … there are opponents to this system.