Jury Instructions for the Modern Age 9. DON’T let yourself get information about the case from the news media or any other outside source. Even if news reports are accurate and complete, they cannot substitute for your own impressions about the case. If you accidentally hear outside information about the case during trial, tell a member of the court staff in private.441
Cases
In State v. Boling,442 the Washington Court of Appeals affirmed a trial court’s grant of a new trial in a manslaughter case in which a juror did Internet research on alcohol poisoning as a cause of death, when the medical examiner testified that the cause of death was a brain injury (subdural hematoma) resulting from blunt force trauma to the head. Here, the [trial] court was less interested in whether one or more jurors voted to convict for reasons outside the evidence and the law, than in whether that possibility could be ruled out. The court did not order a new trial because a particular juror engaged in a particular thought process. Rather, the juror’s post-trial statements established that the evidence of alcohol toxicity could have been misused. The jury might well have speculated that this was the cause of death but that Mr. Boling was nonetheless also responsible for this cause.443
While the judge in a 2010 murder case was outraged that a juror had tweeted about the trial, he was dissuaded by the prosecution and defense attorneys from removing the juror because only one alternate would have remained. “We’ve been doing this for 250 years now,” the judge said. “I can tell you it works when we do it this way. It fails when we don’t.”444 The case ended in a mistrial anyway, due to a hung jury.445
West Virginia – Civil:Archaic; Criminal: Modern In 2000, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals accepted drafts of proposed model jury instructions for civil and criminal trials for “a six-month comment and working period.”446 The instructions were posted on the court’s website and remained there, without changes, until 2009, when they were removed “pending review and revision.”447 Meanwhile in a 2010 ruling the court called for trial judges to instruct jurors regarding use of the Internet during trial, citing with approval the rule proposed by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.448
441. Super. Ct. Judges’ Ass’n. & Dist. & Muni. Ct. Judges’ Ass’n. of the State of Wash., Juror’s Guide, published in 6 Wash. Prac., Wash. Pattern Jury Instr. Civ., Appendix A (5th ed. rev. 2010). 442. 131 Wash. App. 329, 127 P.3d 740 (Wash. Ct. App., Div. 3 2006) , rev. denied, 158 Wash. 2d 1011, 145 P.3d 1214 (2006) (table). 443. Id. at 333, 127 P.3d at 742. 444. Levi Pulkkinen, Judge to juror: Stop tweeting about trial, Seattle 911 — A Police and Crime Blog, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Nov. 17, 2010, http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/2010/11/17/judgeto-juror-stop-tweeting-about-trial/. 445. Levi Pulkkinen, Mistrial declared in cold-case slaying, Seattle 911 — A Police and Crime Blog, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 22, 2010, http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/2010/12/22/mistrialdeclared-in-cold-case-slaying/. 446. In re Proposed Model Jury Instructions, No. _____ (W. Va. Dec. 13, 2000), available at http://web. archive.org/web/20070205092710/ http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca/jury/order.htm. 447. James R. Elkins, West Virginia Homicide Jury Instructions Project: Revised Homicide Jury Instructions for West Virginia, n.d. [2009?], http://myweb.wvnet.edu/~jelkins/adcrimlaw. 448. State v. Dellinger, 225 W. Va. 736, 743, n.11, 696 S.E.2d 38, 45 n.11 (2010). For discussion of this case, see p. 404, infra. For discussion of the suggested federal rule, see p. 311, supra.
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Volume 1, Issue 3