In this Chapter the Commission examines to what extent current law is sufficient to deal with the risk of juror misconduct, in particular the risk that a juror may engage in independent investigations, such as searching for information on the internet about the case on which the person is sitting as a juror or visiting a crime scene alone. This involves the application of two principles discussed in Chapter 1, the right to a fair trial and that the jury must be unbiased. In Part B the Commission examines whether the juror’s oath to arrive at a verdict “according to the evidence” is sufficient to prevent such misconduct and also discusses a related issue, to what extent the publicity surrounding a case could affect the fairness of a trial. The Commission also examines the approaches taken to juror misconduct in other jurisdictions. In Part C, the Commission reviews the provisional recommendations made in the Consultation Paper and, having regard to the views expressed in the consultation process, sets out its final recommendations.
CCCurrent Position in Ireland and Comparative Approaches
(1)The juror’s oath and judge’s directions to the jury
Section 19(1) of the Juries Act 1976 sets out the following oath that each juror involved in a criminal trial must take:
“I will well and truly try the issue whether the accused is (or are) guilty or not guilty of the offences (or the several offences) charged in the indictment preferred against him (or her or them) and a true verdict give according to the evidence.”494
Similarly, section 19(3) of the 1976 Actsets out the following oath that each juror in a case other than a criminal trial must take:
“I will well and truly try all such issues as shall be given to me to try and true verdicts give according to the evidence.”
The oath clearly requires a juror to decide a case, whether a criminal trial or otherwise, exclusively on the basis of evidence presented in court. This obligation is reinforced by a specific direction from the trial judge after the jury has been selected that they must try the case on the evidence presented in court, and must not be influenced by any external matters or to obtain information elsewhere. This is also reinforced in the trial judge’s summing up to the jury at the end of the trial and immediately before they retire to consider their verdict.
It has been noted that the content of such a direction may be moulded to the facts of the case and, for example, may take account of the degree of publicity that the case has attracted.495In the past, the direction would typically include a statement that the jury should not read any newspapers or magazines that might include coverage of the trial or listen to radio programmes or watch TV. The advent of the internet and social media sites, and in particular their ready accessibility through smart phones or Wi-Fi enabled tablets, now provide access to a wide range of materials such as archives of media reports that may have reported on the factual background to a trial, general information on scientific matters that might arise in a trial (such as DNA evidence) and a huge array of general commentary such as blogs and other material from social media. This information can contain prejudicial material, and has the potential to impact on the right to a fair trial. In recent years, trial judges have incorporated specific comments to the jury not to access information regarding the trial through internet search engines or social media.496
(2)Effect of publicity on the fairness of jury trial
In a number of cases the courts have considered the effect on jurors of pre-trial publicity and on ongoing media coverage as a trial proceeds. As to pre-trial publicity, in Z v Director of Public Prosecutions497 the applicant applied in 1993 to prohibit his trial on charges of rape. The applicant’s (then-alleged) victim, who was 14 years of age at the time, had become pregnant as a result of this and she and her parents had inquired about whether obtaining a termination of the pregnancy would affect the admissibility of evidence at the trial of Z. This then gave rise to the decision in 1992 in Attorney General v X498 in which the Supreme Court had held that it was permissible for Z’svictim, referred to as Ms A, to obtain a termination. This decision in 1992 received enormous national and international media coverage, although neither Ms A nor Mr Z were named in the media. Nonetheless, Mr Z sought to have his trial prohibited on the basis that the pre-trial publicity would mean that it was highly probable that the jurors would be pre-disposed to convict him. This argument was rejected on the ground that the trial judge would be able to deal with the publicity surrounding the trial by directing the jury that the controversy and publicity surrounding the case was completely irrelevant to the trial and should be completely disregarded. In Kelly v O’Neill499Denham J commented in the Supreme Court that the decision in Z v Director of Public Prosecutions recognised “the robustness of the Irish jury… and the administration of justice proceeded.”
As to publicity occurring in the course of course of a trial, in D v Director of Public Prosecutions500 the applicant had been charged with indecent assault of a girl. As a result of inaccurate newspaper reporting of the trial, the jury in his trial had been discharged and when the newspapers in question had appeared in court to explain their inaccurate reporting counsel for the prosecution had stated that as a result of the reporting “a patently guilty man had gone free.” This in turn received further widespread media coverage which included a sympathetic interview with the victim (who was not named), and the applicant sought to prevent his re-trial on the charge in question. The High Court granted the order sought but this was overturned by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court accepted the importance of the right to a fair trial and that a juror might well remember reading the media coverage of the previous trial and feel sympathy towards the victim, but the applicant had not established that there was a real risk that the jury would be prevented from returning an impartial. The Court concluded that, to hold otherwise, would imply that the jury would ignore their oath to try the case on the evidence adduced and to ignore extraneous evidence.
In these decisions, the courts have emphasised the importance of the trial judge’s directions to a jury that they must try the issues before them only on the evidence adduced. In the D case, Blayney J noted that the jury will be reminded of this in the trial judge’s summing up immediately before they begin deliberations.501
(3)Prior juror experience and perception of bias
Jurors will bring their general experience of life to bear on their deliberations without breaching the oath under section 19 of the Juries Act 1976 or risking an unfair trial; indeed, as previously noted,502 such life experience is of immense value in the deliberative process required of juries. In some instances, however, this life experience may be more directly related to the issues under consideration and raise the risk that the trial is not conducted by an impartial jury. This was the issue that arose in The People (DPP) v Tobin,503 where the defendant was on trial for rape and other sexual offences. During the jury’s deliberations, a woman juror revealed that she had previously experienced sexual abuse. The trial judge was informed of this and was assured by the foreman that the disclosure by the juror had had no impact on her impartiality and, after legal argument, the trial judge declined to discharge the jury and allowed the trial to proceed. The defendant was convicted and, on appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeal, applying the objective test of reasonable apprehension of bias, held that given the particular circumstances of the case the disclosure in question could lead to a reasonable apprehension that the juror may have been influenced by her experience of abuse and that this might also have had an influence on the other members of the jury. The Court therefore quashed the conviction and ordered a re-trial. The Court of Criminal Appeal added that its decision in this case did not rule out the possibility that, in another case, a considered and carefully worded direction to the jury could deal with this type of problem and allow the trial to proceed and avoid the need to discharge the jury.
(4)Juror misconduct and contempt of court
An instance that came close to active juror misconduct occurred in The People (DPP) v McDonagh.504 In this case, two members of the Garda Síochána had been sworn as jury keepers but it was clear that they did not fully understand their role beyond preventing external interference with the jury. On at least one occasion one of the Garda jury keepers had discussed the case with one of the jurors, though only in a fairly general way, and there were, it appears, discussions of “war time stories” from other cases over drinks; and, when the jury were sequestered overnight in a hotel a Garda jury keeper had spent some time drinking with one of the jurors in her bedroom into the early hours of the morning. The Court of Criminal Appeal accepted that these events did not involve subornation of the jury in that there had been no attempt to influence the jury’s decision-making process but, applying the objective test of bias in The People (DPP) v Tobin,505discussed above, the Court concluded that the conviction should be quashed and a re-trial ordered.
The examples discussed above do not involve misconduct in the sense of a juror actively seeking extraneous information by, for example, visiting a crime scene or carrying out an internet search in breach of the juror’s oath. As discussed in the Consultation Paper and briefly below, however, such misconduct has occurred in other jurisdictions.
As the Commission has previously noted, it is in general desirable to preserve the general secrecy of jury deliberations506 but this does not preclude communication with the trial judge after the jury has begun its deliberations, as expressly referred to in section 15(4) of the Juries Act 1976 and illustrated by the decision in The People (DPP) v Tobin.507Where the jury communicates in this way during the trial and if the trial judge considers that the behavior is inappropriate, the juror may be discharged from the jury under section 24 of the 1976 Act and the trial may be able to proceed.Where juror misconduct occurs that is in clear breach of the oath, whether through internet searches or other inappropriate behavior, this constitutes an interference with the administration of justice and, therefore, a case of criminal contempt of court.508 Where the conduct comes to light after the jury’s verdict has been delivered, a prosecution for contempt of court may be instituted. The Commission now turns to examine the approach to this issue in other jurisdictions, where the question of enacting a specific offence to deal with juror misconduct has been considered.
(5)Comparative approaches to juror misconduct
As the Commission noted in the Consultation Paper,509 in other jurisdictions juries have been discharged arising from the impact of extraneous influences, including active forms of juror misconduct such as internet-based research by jury members.
In the English case R v Young510 it emerged that some members of the jury had used an ouija board in an attempt to make contact with the murder victim in the case that they were empanelled to hear. In R v Marshall and Crump511 it emerged after the jury had delivered its verdict that some printed material downloaded from the internet had been found in the jury room. The material, obtained from the websites of the Crown Prosecution Service, the Home Office and a criminal defence solicitor’s practice, dealt with a number of issues relating to charging and sentencing practice and in relation to the offences with which the defendants had been charged. The defendants argued on appeal that the jury members must have undertaken their own research and that the material found indicated that they might have taken extraneous matters into account when reaching their verdicts. The Court of Appeal accepted that a jury’s access and use of additional material could in principle be regarded as an irregularity that could render a conviction unsafe but in this instance concluded that it had not and it dismissed the defendants’ appeal.
In R v Mirza512 Lord Hope stated that the jury system would be strengthened if jurors were told before the trial begins that they are under a duty to inform the court at once of any irregularity that occurs while they are deliberating. After the decision in Mirza, a 2004 Practice Direction was issued in England and Wales513 which provides that trial judges should ensure that the jury are alerted to the need to bring any concerns about fellow jurors to the attention of the judge at the time they occur, and not to wait until the case is concluded. The Practice Direction added that “it is undesirable to encourage inappropriate criticism of fellow jurors, or to threaten jurors with contempt of court.” In support of this balanced approach, the Judicial Studies Board for England and Wales has also issued guidance on the form of judicial direction that should be given, which points out that the judge should note that jurors ought not to presume that misconduct is common or likely to occur but that if it does occur it should be brought to the judge’s attention. The Commission is also aware that, since 2010 there has been a specimen “Internet Direction” to juries in Northern Ireland, which focuses on the requirement in the juror’s oath to determine the case according to the evidence only.
In R v Smith and Mercieca514 a juror wrote a letter to the trial judge expressing concern in relation to the conduct of other jurors in the case. The UK House of Lords held that the trial judge had acted correctly when he decided not to question the jurors about the contents of the letter because if he had done so he inevitably would have had to question the jurors about their deliberations and whether the defendant was guilty of any of the offences charged. Nonetheless, the House of Lords concluded that the trial judge should have assumed that the letter was accurate and that, therefore, if the jury had been behaving as alleged by the juror in her letter, they required a strong, even stern, warning that they must follow the judge’s directions on the law, adhere to the evidence without speculation and decide on the verdicts without pressure or bargaining. In this respect, the House of Lords concluded that the general reiteration by the trial judge of the jurors’ duty to decide the case on the evidence adduced was not sufficient. In this instance the jury required stronger and more detailed guidance and instruction, and without this it was difficult to be satisfied that the discussion in the jury room was conducted after that in the proper manner.
In this context, while a prosecution for contempt of court can rightly be regarded as a last resort, in 2011 a juror in an English case who contacted the defendant during the course of the trial through her Facebook account was convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to a term of imprisonment.515
A 2010 English study carried out for the UK Ministry of Justice by Cheryl Thomas516 examined the effect of publicity on juror decision-making and the prevalence of internet searches by jurors. This was the first empirical study in England of the “fade factor”, that is, whether the further away media reports are from a trial the more likely they are to fade from jurors’ memories. The study’s findings supported the view that, in general, a “fade factor” applies to pre-trial publicity and does not affect the deliberations of a jury. Of the jurors who participated in the study, those serving on high profile cases were almost seven times more likely to recall media coverage (70%) than jurors serving on standard cases (11%). In high profile cases, the study found that over a third of jurors (35%) remembered pre-trial coverage, with television (66%) and national newspapers (53%) the two main sources. This contrasted with jurors’ recall of media reports in standard cases, where local newspapers accounted for almost all (77%) coverage recalled. Two thirds (66%) of jurors in high profile cases who recalled media coverage either did not or could not remember it having any particular slant. Where jurors did recall any emphasis, almost all recalled it suggesting the defendant was guilty. In high profile cases, 20% of jurors who recalled media reports of their case said they found it difficult to put these reports out of their mind while serving as a juror.517
As to internet searches, the 2010 English study found that more jurors said they saw information on the internet than admitted looking for it on the internet. Dr Thomas concluded that as the jurors who participated in the study were admitting to doing something they would have been told by the judge not to do, this may have explained why more jurors said they saw reports on the internet than said they looked on the internet.518 The study found that in high profile cases 26% said they saw information on the internet compared to 12% who said they looked. In standard cases 13% said they saw information compared to 5% who said they looked. Among the jurors who said they looked for information on the internet, most (68%) were over 30 years old. Among jurors in high profile cases, an even higher percentage (81%) of those who looked for information on the internet was over 30.
The 2010 English study concluded that to address both jury impropriety in general and juror use of the internet, the judiciary and the UK Courts Service should consider issuing every sworn juror with written guidelines clearly outlining the requirements for serving on a jury, which should acknowledge the value of the juror’s role and clearly explain what improper behaviour is, why it is wrong and what to do about it. The study also recommended that the trial judge should review the requirements with jurors as soon as they are sworn, which should include a fuller direction to jurors on why they should not use the internet to look for information or discuss their case. It also recommended that jurors should be required to keep the guidelines with them throughout the trial.519
In the majority of other common law jurisdictions,520 courts continue to provide juries with specific warnings and directions as required to deal with extraneous influences and they have in general not enacted specific offences of juror misconduct. An exception is the Australian state of New South Wales in which legislative change to the NSW Jury Act 1977 followed a number of cases involving juror misconduct.521 In one of these, R v K,522 the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal quashed a murder conviction after it emerged that jurors accessed incriminating evidence about an accused via the internet. This was discovered after the verdict was reached, when jurors went to a nearby hotel for a drink where they met counsel for the defendant who was told by a juror that other jurors had discovered through the internet that the defendant had been accused of murdering his second wife, and that the current trial was a retrial on this charge. The trial judge had given the jury the standard direction to disregard any information apart from evidence presented at trial but he had not given a specific direction to refrain from engaging in internet research about the accused and the case. In quashing the conviction, the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal suggested that the NSW Jury Act 1977 should be amended and that it should be an offence for jurors to conduct research about the accused and the case. The Court also suggested that a trial judge should give a specific direction about such research in addition to the normal direction about disregarding any publicity about the case.
Following this, the NSW Jury Act 1977 was amended by theNSW Jury Amendment Act 2004 to deal with juror misconduct.523 Section 68B of the Jury Act 1977, as inserted by the 2004 Act, provides that it is an offence for a juror wilfully to disclose to any person during the trial information about the deliberations of the jury or how a juror or jury formed any opinion or conclusion in relation to an issue arising in the trial. The offence does not apply where a juror discloses information to another juror, or where the trial judge consents to a disclosure. Section 68C of the Jury Act 1977, as inserted by the 2004 Act, prohibits jurors from making inquiries about the accused, or any other matters relevant to the trial, but does not prohibit a juror from making an inquiry of the court, or of another member of the jury, in the proper exercise of his or her functions as a juror. Nor does it prevent a juror from making an inquiry authorised by the court. Section 68C also provides that anything done by a juror in contravention of a direction given to the jury by the judge in the criminal proceedings is not a proper exercise by the juror of his or her functions as a juror. Section 68C defines what constitutes “making an inquiry” to include: asking a question of any person, conducting any research, for example, by searching an electronic database for information (such as by using the internet), viewing or inspecting any place or object, conducting an experiment or causing someone else to make an inquiry.
