Judges are resigned to jurors researching their trials online

Although trials have been put at risk by jurors using the internet to research cases they're deciding, judges accept it is inevitable.

Judges are "giving up" trying to stop juries using Google, Facebook and Twitter to access potentially false and prejudicial information about defendants, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, has warned.

High-profile criminal trials, such as that of Baby P, have been put at risk by material posted abroad but widely available online – and Macdonald admits that the consequences can be serious.

But although policing the accuracy of information on the internet is "an unmanageable task", Macdonald said, it should not invalidate a trial if jurors are found to have conducted online research while a case is in progress.

"This is a serious point and we struggled with it, in criminal justice, for years trying to protect juries from what they might read about a case on the internet, material they weren't supposed to know about while they were trying it," Macdonald said.

"In essence, we're finally giving up and just concluding that you have to expect juries to try cases fairly and they're told to do that so I think this is a serious issue around privacy, because policing the internet is really, I think, an unmanageable task.

"I don't think juries should be 'allowed' to do online research," he added. "But I do think we need to assume this will occasionally happen and that it should not invalidate a trial. We have to expect them to follow directions to try the case on the evidence. Otherwise, jury trial will go."

The independence of juries is often referred to as a "hallowed principle" of English justice. There are strict rules designed to ensure that the only information available to jurors is carefully vetted so as not to be "prejudicial".

But, Macdonald admitted during an Intelligence Squared debate in London, those rules are impossible to enforce when it comes to the internet. Young jurors, for instance, automatically turn to the web to seek information, while defendants frequently upload highly personal information about their lifestyle and, sometimes, crimes, on social networking sites.

In a recent case jurors accessed the Facebook page of a young male defendant accused of aggravated burglary with a weapon who described his site as a "gangster zone" and showed pictures of him holding a gun.

The attorney general, judges and lawyers for prosecution and defence have voiced concerns that important criminal investigations could be compromised because of jurors conducting their own online research into defendants.

Lord Igor Judge, the head of the judiciary in England and Wales, said recently: "Nowadays, judges [direct] the jury not to look at the internet in connection with a trial. [But] inevitably, from time to time, an individual juror will disregard the direction."

In 2005 Adem Karakaya stood trial for repeatedly raping a 14-year-old girl. The jury found Karakaya guilty but, after internet printouts were found in the jury room, the case went to the court of appeal, the conviction was found to be unsafe and the defendant was acquitted in a retrial.

Judge Patrick Moloney QC, of Huntingdon crown court, warns jurors at the beginning of his trials not to Google the person in the dock, in case they find prejudicial information.

(Published by Guardian - October 4, 2010)