Tag: MISTRIAL

A Pennsylvania woman could soon face criminal charges for conducting online research while serving as a juror in a murder trial. The woman, Gretchen Black, reportedly consulted the Web to find out more about the injuries the victim had suffered, and offered to share her findings with the rest of the jury. At the time, the jury had already determined that the defendant was not guilty of ...

A man convicted of manslaughter will get another chance to plead his case before a jury of his peers, now that a Florida Court of Appeals has overturned his conviction because of an iPhone. In 2006, 62-year-old Jose Tapanes was charged with fatally shooting his 19-year-old neighbor Christopher Cote after Cote had walked his dog on Tapanes's lawn. During the ensuing manslaughter trial, Tapanes's ...

Earlier this week, an Arkansas juror potentially jeopardized a judge's ruling by sending tweets from the courtroom, and in Pennsylvania, another juror created rumblings of a mistrial by twittering and posting Facebook updates during the trial. We think this must be a trend, because we've just come across this New York Times story about an incident in Florida involving, not one, but nine of the ...