Dealing with Juror Research in the Internet Age

Abstract

Two fundamental rights of criminal procedure preserved by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA) are the right to a trial by jury and the right to a fair trial. A fair jury trial requires jurors to “make their decisions solely on the evidence judicially brought before them”. The right to a fair trial can be compromised if jurors independently access prejudicial information about an accused person. Jurors can base their verdict on this information and thus compromise the accused’s right to a fair trial by not giving their verdict according to the evidence presented in court. Since jury deliberations are carried out in secret and juries do not provide reasons for their verdicts, the court cannot tell if jurors have looked at information not presented at trial. Therefore, courts must ensure that jurors are exposed to, and influenced by, prejudicial information about the accused outside the courtroom as little as possible. This paper attempts to deal with one of the ways jurors can be exposed to prejudicial information: the problem of jurors carrying out independent research on the Internet. It first establishes that this is a real issue. It then looks at how juror research is currently dealt with. It finds that the mechanisms currently used are inadequate, primarily because they are not tailored to the Internet. It then proposes new mechanisms for dealing with juror research involving removing prejudicial information from the Internet. It concludes that it is still possible to prevent the accused’s right to a fair trial being compromised by juror research in the Internet age.