The Jury Googled It: How the Internet Keeps Derailing Trials

The Jury Googled It: How the Internet Keeps Derailing Trials

Every criminal trial in England and Wales rests on a promise that sounds almost quaint today: that twelve ordinary people will decide the case using only what they see and hear in the courtroom, and nothing else. No rumours, no headlines, no history. For most of the jury system’s long life, the courts could more or less keep that promise by controlling what reached the jury box. Newspapers could be restrained, galleries cleared, evidence excluded.

Then jurors started carrying the entire archive of human speculation in their pockets. The temptation to look something up is now so ordinary, so reflexive, that people barely register doing it. And that reflex has quietly become one of the most persistent threats to the fair trial, one the courts have spent more than a decade fighting with warnings, prison sentences and, eventually, an Act of Parliament.

The search that ended a trial

The case that still defines the problem involved a university lecturer serving as a juror on a grievous bodily harm trial at Luton Crown Court. She had been warned repeatedly: by the judge, by notices in the jury waiting room, by an instructional video shown to every new juror. She searched the defendant’s name anyway, discovered a previous rape charge of which he had been acquitted, and shared it with her fellow jurors. The trial, close to completion, collapsed. A retrial was ordered, the victim had to give evidence all over again, and the juror was jailed for six months for contempt of court.

She was not the first. Just weeks earlier another juror had received eight months for contacting an acquitted defendant on Facebook while the jury was still deliberating on charges against the remaining defendants, discussing those deliberations as she typed. The years since have added steadily to the list: jurors hunting for previous convictions, checking whether they knew a witness on social media, downloading material about the charge and carrying it into the jury room, even posting online about how they intended to vote before the evidence had finished.

Why looking it up is not harmless

To many people, punishing a juror for a Google search feels disproportionate. The information was public. The juror was trying to be thorough. What harm?

The answer is that a verdict must rest only on evidence presented in open court, where both sides can challenge and test it. Material kept from a jury is usually kept out for a reason: it may be irrelevant, unreliable, hearsay, or, as in the Luton case, an allegation the defendant was actually cleared of. A juror who supplements the trial with search results is not better informed. They are deciding someone’s liberty on untested material the defence has never had a chance to answer, and neither the judge nor the parties will ever know it happened. Every collapsed trial then exacts the same toll: weeks of court time lost, victims and witnesses recalled to relive their evidence, defendants left waiting months longer for a verdict, and public money burned.

From judges’ warnings to an Act of Parliament

For decades this conduct was punished as common law contempt, with the boundaries defined case by case and judge by judge. The Law Commission concluded that was no longer good enough: jurors deserved to be told, clearly and in advance, that researching their case was a crime rather than a vaguely defined discourtesy. Parliament agreed. The Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 inserted new offences into the Juries Act 1974, making it a specific criminal offence for a juror to research the case they are trying or to share that research with fellow jurors, each carrying up to two years’ imprisonment. The message to every new jury panel is now unambiguous. Googling the defendant is not a lapse of etiquette. It is a crime.

The problem is bigger than the jury box

Jurors are only half the story. Under the Contempt of Court Act 1981, anyone who publishes material creating a substantial risk of serious prejudice to active proceedings can be in contempt, and on social media everyone is a publisher. The murder trial of two teenage girls for the killing of Angela Wrightson had to be abandoned after just two days when hundreds of posts purported to identify the anonymised defendants; the retrial was moved to Leeds. Nor is profile any protection: a judge referred a mid-trial post by former footballer Gary Neville, with his 1.5 million followers, to the Attorney General for possible contempt. The concern runs deep enough that the Attorney General’s Office has run a national #ThinkBeforeYouPost campaign warning ordinary users that speculating about a defendant’s past, identifying protected individuals or leaking court documents can all end in front of a judge.

Layer on the modern armchair detective, arriving at live cases with theories, doorstep visits and named suspects, and the courts now find themselves defending the jury box on every side. We have looked before at when social media sleuths get it wrong, and occasionally right; the consistent thread is that information gathered without discipline tends to damage the very cases it claims to help.

The discipline the internet forgot

There is a professional moral here. The law has never only cared what information is; it cares how it was obtained and whether it can be tested. Facts dug up impulsively, without lawful basis or documentation, can poison proceedings however accurate they turn out to be. That is the real difference between online sleuthing and professional investigation. Properly conducted investigations are built for the courtroom from the outset: lawful methods, a documented trail, preserved sources and evidence that survives challenge. The internet has made information effortless to find. The courts keep reminding everyone that finding it was never the hard part.

If your matter needs evidence gathered lawfully and presented in a form the court can rely on, Tremark Associates can help. Call our team on 0113 263 6466 or use the form below to discuss how we can support your case.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it illegal for jurors to research a case online?

Yes. Under sections 20A to 20D of the Juries Act 1974, introduced by the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, it is a criminal offence for a juror to research the case they are trying or to share that research with other jurors. The offences carry up to two years’ imprisonment, and jurors have been jailed both under these offences and under the older law of contempt.

Can an ordinary social media user really be in contempt of court?

Yes. The Contempt of Court Act 1981 applies to anyone who publishes material creating a substantial risk of serious prejudice to active proceedings, and a public post is a publication. Speculating about a defendant’s previous convictions, identifying protected witnesses or defendants, or sharing leaked court material can all amount to contempt, punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment or a fine.

Why can’t a juror use information that is publicly available anyway?

Because a fair trial depends on verdicts being reached only on evidence presented and tested in court. Online material may be inaccurate, inadmissible or relate to allegations of which the defendant was cleared. Neither party can challenge material a juror finds privately, which is exactly why using it is prohibited.

How is professional investigation different from online sleuthing?

Professional investigators work to a lawful basis, use compliant methods and document how every piece of evidence was obtained, so it can withstand scrutiny and be relied upon in proceedings. Amateur online digging, however well intentioned, risks prejudicing trials, harming innocent people and rendering useful information unusable.