Juror Disregards Judge’s Instructions, Sentenced to More Jury Duty

The right to a jury trial is the foundation of the American legal system. Like all rights though, it forms an obligation on others to uphold that right. A defendant’s right to a jury trial requires twelve other individuals to listen to the defendant’s story impartially.  Impartiality is vital to the trial process, so important that jurors are instructed by the judge’s written instruction to refrain from discussing or reading about the case.

Obviously not paying attention to the judge’s instructions, in October 2012, Vishnu Singh was using his laptop to research a murder case online. The case was about Kenneth Jackson, who had raped and stabbed his victim, a mother of three, to death. Jackson’s case had already been delayed in 2011, when prosecutors failed to find jurors willing to impose the death penalty. Singh informed some of his fellow jurors that he was conducting online searches and one juror told Judge William Fuente. Funete dismissed Singh from the Tampa courtroom, although not before warning Singh that he would be back in court next year for a hearing of his own.

In January 2013 at Singh’s hearing, Judge Fuente sentenced Singh to five days in jail. Singh could avoid the sentence by attending an alternative sentence. Singh’s other option was to endure the process of jury selection every week for the next three months. Singh opted for three more months of waiting in a jury room.

Alternative sentencing is not a new development in the law. The controversy in this incident is not Judge Fuentes’s decision to offer Singh an unusual punishment as an alternative to jail, but the fact the alternative is considered a duty that citizens are supposed to discharge. Citizens themselves might believe that being chosen for jury duty is punishment enough, but a judge should not encourage that misguided mental attitude. It is a citizen’s inability to treat jury duty other than a chore which causes many of the problems courts experience with selecting juries. Encouraging the mental root of the problem will do nothing to lessen the trouble.

Fuente would say that using jury duty as an alternative sentence serves to shame Singh and deter future jurors from making the same mistake. Shaming and deterrence are indeed the goals of alternative sentencing. Deterrence, scaring people from doing what Singh did, would be critical in convincing people to be good jurors. Making an example of the wrongdoer in front of the next few groups of possible wrongdoers is an effective strategy.

Singh’s punishment would be very good at scaring jurors straight. The punishment might be so good, it would not only scare the jurors straight while serving on the jury, future jurors might not want to serve on the jury at all. Who wants to go to jury duty knowing there’s a chance they could send the next several months in jury duty?

That last argument sounds like I’m making too much out of too little. I think it is important though that the public goes to jury duty with a feeling that they should be serving rather than with a feeling that they have to serve. The former means that the jury is interested and committed to the case while a jury which has to be brought to the jury box by threat of state power is a jury which might not discharge its duty in the manner which the Constitution requires.