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| Can juries really be unbiased in the Information Age? Image: Shutterstock |
In the
age of instant social media commentary, is it possible for juries to be
completely unbiased? Particularly for
high-profile cases, such as allegations against Bill Cosby or the Grand Jury on
Eric Garner, the issue is an important one.
It’s
easy to make snap judgments about particularly scandalous cases. For Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz,
for example, social response has already begun even without an official
case. Dershowitz, who was allegedly
involved in a sex scandal with an underage woman, has not officially been sued;
the case has only been filed in the Florida federal court, along with
Dershowitz’s rebuttal. However, since
the woman in question has also claimed to have been involved with Prince Andrew,
all eyes and ears—and media outlets—are tuned into the proceedings.
“So
many times we talk about the presumption of innocence in a court of law,” said Kendall Coffey, Dershowitz’s defending
lawyer. “Maybe there should be more of a
presumption of innocence in the court of public opinion.”
Whether
or not Dershowitz and others are taken to trial and found guilty or innocent,
the question remains: Can they really be
tried by an unbiased jury of their peers, as the law requires? Celebrity reputations don’t tend to do well
when caught up in the 24-hour news cycle or the plethora of blogs, websites,
and YouTube videos. And sometimes, the
jurors themselves are unable to hold the line between the case and public
opinion, as when juror Kasim Davey was jailed for being in
contempt of court after posting a derogatory comment about the case for which
he was juror.
Of
course, access to outside information isn’t anything new. Newspapers have always been full of stories
about the biggest cases, and it’s not impossible to get a message to a
defendant. The advent of the internet
has just made the whole process of getting and passing on information a lot
easier.
Studies on the influence of
media on juries
have come up with some disturbing results.
Ogloff and Vidmar found that “exposure to the various media had a
prejudicial impact on people, as they were unaware of their biases.” And a Stanford study found that when a case
receives a lot of media coverage, elected judges tend to sentence more harshly.
Simply
disallowing press coverage isn’t feasible—or desirable, since the public has
the right to know the truth. In some
cases, it’s possible to maintain a certain lack of bias in jurors by moving the
trial to a different location, but change of venue motions aren’t usually
granted, due to higher costs.
Maybe
it’s just unreasonable to assume that a jury can be unbiased when it comes to
high profile cases. Increased media
coverage means increased pressure on the prosecutors trying celebrities, for
instance, and the effect of the media on those involved in a case can be
devastating even before the case begins, never mind when the verdict is reached. In the case of the allegations against Bill
Cosby, for example, the effects are already being seen—despite his refusal to
comment, Cosby has had to cancel multiple TV and live performances.
Is a
public figure’s reputation a reasonable amount of collateral damage when it
comes to court cases? Perhaps if they’re
guilty—but what if they’re not? And by
the time that’s determined, the damage has already been done.
There
is no easy answer. But as technology and
access to it improves, the supposed unbiased nature of the jury of one’s peers
will definitely need to be reconsidered.
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