Juror misconduct is when the law of the court is violated by a member of the jury while a court case is in progression or after it has reached a verdict.
Misconduct can take several forms: Communication by the jury with those outside of the trial/court case. Those on the outside include “witnesses, attorneys, bailiffs, or judges about the case”. When the jury member brings outside evidence that they may have found themselves into the trial which has not been allowed by the judges or lawyers and is used to create bias on the part of the juror. This new information may be used to influence their final decision. “Conducting experiments regarding theories of the case outside the court’s presence”.
Bias
"An inclination of temperament or outlook; especially: a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgement"
An example mentioned in Eltis's article "Courts, Litigants and the Digital Age. Law, Ethics and Practice" is a juror in Manchester who tweeted openly throughout a rape trial. She was found to be tweeting to her friends and asking them to poll whether they thought that the man being tried was guilty or not; whether he committed the rape or not. Another example was the case of Wardlaw v. State where a member of the jury, against the direct instructions by the judge to not use the Internet, looked up the definition of the illness that the individual on trial was stated to be suffering. This jury member also looked up symptoms and whether lying was an effect of suffering with this mental illness. The juror did learn that lying was in fact a "symptom"; however, she chose to gather this information during the discussion to find a verdict.
Social media
The Internet has frequently been used by jury members to gain access to additional information about a certain mental illness, or a broader definition or they are outsourcing trial information. The legal system and both the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and both the 5th amendment and 6th amendment in the United States are built around the fact that everyone is required to have a fair trial free from bias. There have been multiple instances where certain cases required retrials because of bias on the part of one or more of the jury members. The Internet, while it is the primary source to find additional information and details about another individual, does not necessarily mean that the information it provides is correct or accurate. According to Bell’s article, Juror Misconduct and the Internet, the use of the Internet within trials is not a new occurrence. It has been found in many cases, jurors who have searched for words unfamiliar to them, done extensive research, "engaged in at-home experiments, visited accident scenes, and otherwise obtained specialized knowledge".
Forms of Internet information
Traditional sources
These sources seem to revolve around cases which include members of the jury searching for additional information about a certain term or illness that is significant in the case at hand. Usually the main outlets are encyclopedic definitions or Wikipedia. The use of the Internet has also given jurors the ability to easily and readily access information that they may want to find out about. As stated in Bell's article, many jurors do not have the time during breaks to go out to a library and locate hard copy sources of information needed, thus making the Internet the primary source because all it requires is the simple push of a button.
Novel sources
This type of information includes access to different sources of information such as:
(1) "information about parties and witnesses" referring to information about a defendant’s past, background information on a specific employer or business, both publicized information and private information such as driving records, and tickets. All this information is easily accessible over the Internet and all this information was shared among jury members in specific cases. The main outlets usually include Twitter, Facebook, and online encyclopedias and dictionaries. This would overthrow the entire trial thus causing an automatic mistrial.
(2) "Scientific and Technical Information". This source of information refers to using the Internet to perform their own form of investigation on the side without actually having to go to the physical scene of the crime. This form of personal investigation may use Google Earth to acquire specific locations and specific fine points about a crime scene such as neighbourhoods, distances between certain homes and areas, etc.