What is Jury Misconduct?
When jurors are sworn in, they promise to abide by certain rules. They promise to listen to all the evidence before making up their minds. They promise not to talk about the case to anyone, including the other jurors, until instructed to do so. They promise to remain free of outside influence which means they may not to do any independent research, like looking things up on the internet or conducting any experiments to verify or disprove evidence presented in court. And they promise to put aside passion and prejudice and judge the case solely on the evidence presented and the law as it is explained by the judge. Jurors must not only be scrupulous about their conduct, they must avoid even the appearance of impropriety. In one of my recent cases, several jurors were having an extended conversation with a uniformed officer who was going to testify in the case. The conversation was about baseball and the officer’s long hours. The judge was made aware of this conversation and even though th
