Cameron Brown trial update: Juror used a dictionary to look up a word
It may seem like no big deal to use a dictionary to look up a definition pertaining to case while you're deliberating. But you can't. You just can't. It's specifically mentioned in the jury instructions in every trial.
So, apparently, one of the jurors deliberating in the Cameron Brown trial may have done this. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for early Friday morning.
I don't know what the word that was looked up is.
It's been about a week since the late Friday announcement by the jury that they were deadlocked, although they've only deliberated about a two full days since that time.
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Denise - Sprocket is reporting that the word looked up was 'malice'.
First, what is the option for a jury member when they are presented with vocabulary or legal concepts that are beyond them? Can then send a note to the judge?
Second, your first sentence - you have loop when I think you mean look.
Peace,
Stu
I'd be curious to know if the juror looking up the word was Juror #4 .. the one who said he had wanted out. Maybe this is his way of getting out of it all.
Constitutionally speaking, that is not juror misconduct. Jurors used to have the prerogative to decide both the facts AND the law -- and in a sense, they still do. It's just that judges and prosecutors don't want them to know that, because it takes power away from them. As John Adams put it, it is "not only [the juror's] right, but his duty... to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, even though in direct opposition to the direction of the court." 2 Life of John Adams 255 (C. Adams ed. 1850). "The English law obliges no man to decide a cause upon oath against his own judgment, nor does it oblige any man to take any opinion upon trust." Id. If you want to know why this is so important, look up the trial of Peter Zenger.
The Framers would be appalled, as the independent jury was one of the critical bulwarks against tyranny embedded in the common law. If the representatives of the people (who don't always represent the people) enact a law oppressive to liberty, the people not only have the right but a duty to oppose it in the courts by subversion. See, Paul Butler, By Any Means Necessary: Using Violence and Subversion to Change Unjust Law, 50 UCLA L. Rev. 721 (2003). (As for Professor Butler's use of the V-word, don't get turned off by that, as the right to commit tyrannicide was the legal basis for the American Revolution; you can't get it on line, but it is a first-rate article.)
I would submit that a mistrial occurred if a juror were removed for doing his or her own research.
To Ken:
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