Penalising the googling juror. Reflections on the futility of Part 3 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill (2013-14)

This blog takes as its focus provisions in Part 3 of the Bill which seeks to put on a statutory footing offences connected with private research by jurors. I suggest that resort to the criminal law constitutes a clumsy, impractical and unnecessarily punitive attempt to regulate the extra-curial activities of the modern, online juror. It is incumbent on our lawmakers to explore more imaginative responses to the undoubted problem of jurors’ access to untested, internet materials – responses that might be more obviously premised upon an appreciation of jurors’ dutiful efforts to arrive at just verdicts.