Justice in the Internet age
According to reports from Associated Press, a juror was removed from a jury after running a poll on Facebook asking her friends whether she should vote Guilty or Not Guilty.
The trial was taking place in Burnley and concerned a sex abuse case. The juror broke court rules which forbid jurors from discussing the case outside the jury room and is exceedingly lucky not to face charges of contempt of court after her online indiscretions came to light. She has not been named and the trial continued with a jury of eleven.
Facebook also featured in legal news this month when an Australian court allowed papers to be served by Facebook. An Australian couple who have allegedly defaulted on a AU$100,000 house loan had failed to respond to correspondence sent to their home address, and had failed to appear at a court hearing. The lawyer was able to find them on Facebook pages and asked the judge for permission to file the subpoena to their Facebook email address, a request which was granted by the judge. Of course, if they ignored papers sent to them in the post, it seems unlikely that they would respond to an email request, and I am surprised that any court would consider serving legal papers by email to be reliable or indisputable. I must confess, if I received a summons via email I would assume it was yet another spam designed to get me to visit a malicious website and delete it without a second thought.
22nd December 2008