A friend of mine was recently on Jury duty, the case (not a very big one was about fraud) and during the trial he found himself having to understand a number of technical issues to do with personal computer (PC) operations (spreadsheets, emails and general accounting software) as well as the various operations of accounting itself.
It turned out that none of the jurors know anything about PC’s or for that matter accounting and found the whole thing very confusing, though the court room staff had set out the case for and against in as simple a way a possible, but as there was little knowledge of the technologies within the jurors, this took an enormous amount of time. The case was eventually dismissed for various legal reasons, but my friend asked me why they had been chosen for such a technical case in the first place.
Of course the current trial jury system is based on total random selection of people and you have no knowledge of what case you may be involved. My friends case lasted three days, but some fraud cases can last many weeks or even months and I am sure can get very much more complicated.
Just after the above conversation took place, I came across an article in the UK IT magazine Computing.co.uk (and subsequently here on the British Computer Society (BCS) site) that I receive that discusses the need for technically aware juries so that technically complicated trials can progress at a faster speed and of course have a real chance of convicting criminals that perhaps may have previously got off due to the technical ignorance of juries through not fault of their own.
This is not the first time that this subject has raised its head, instances of non-technical juries having problems with technical fraud trial information were reported in 2005, and not all sources think that professional technical trained juries are the total answer as per this article.
However, knowing what I have learn in 35+ years in IT, there needs to be better training for Jurors so that they can better understand technology when it is used in a criminal act.
Tags: Criminal Justice System, BCS
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