Jurors could be jailed for 2 years for searching about cases online
Jurors should face up to two years in jail if they search online for information about a case, the Law Commission has advised today.
This is the first of three reports dealing with Contempt of Court, the remaining two to be published in 2014.
The report said: “we recommend the creation of a new statutory criminal offence for a sworn juror in a case deliberately searching for extraneous information related to the case that he or she is trying… in light of consultees’ general agreement with our proposals on sentencing, we recommend that the new offence be punishable by a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.”
This comes after 29-year-old Joseph Beard was given two months in jail for using Google to research a fraud case and sharing the information with the rest of the jury.
Earlier in the year, an article by Professor Thomas found that 23 per cent of jurors questioned were “confused about the rule on internet use”, while almost two thirds (62 per cent) of jurors questioned had not heard of the recent prosecutions of jurors for misconduct.
It was also discovered that seven per cent of jurors admitted to looking for information about the legal teams in their trial, whilst six per cent admitted to looking for definitions of legal terms.