The Robert Shuler Smith Circus returns to the Hinds County Courthouse as his retrial begins at the end of this month. The Attorney General prosecutors actually did something right and filed a motion to sequester the jury. Special Assistant Attorney General Robert Anderson argued:
(4)After the earlier trial of this case, the Court permitted counsel for the State and defense counsel to interview some of the jurors who served in the earlier trial to determine whether there was juror misconduct which needed to be investigated further. One of those jurors, Anna Scott, indicated that she had become friends on Facebook – another social media platform – with one of the other jurors during the trial of this case back in December and January. See Exhibit E, attached hereto (excerpt from Interview of Juror Anna Scott).
It looks like the jurors will have a chance to improve their literacy skills by reading books in their spare time:
(5) The Court will also recall that media representatives sat through the entire trial in the balcony of the courtroom back in December and January, and that complete updates were given daily both in the Clarion Ledger newspaper and on one or more of the local television news stations, including WLBT-TV and WAPT-TV. The prosecutors received repeated requests for comment. The Court may also recall that at the outset of the jury selection process, one of the prospective jurors in the venire was even live tweeting from her cell phone and those tweets were being picked up and re-tweeted by members of the press who were in the courtroom. The prospective juror was dismissed
for cause by the Court.
the State of Mississippi respectfully requests this Court issue an order directing that the petit jurors selected to hear this case be sequestered and that they be precluded during their sequestration from having access to local newspapers, television, social media or any other means of outside influence upon them throughout the trial and until such time as they have heard all the evidence and completed their deliberations in this case.Will any of the jurors suffer from cellphone withdrawals? Could that be considered a medical condition? Is it a disability? Stay tuned.
10 comments:
RSS is going to walk free again.
Is the jury pool from Hinds county? I am asking.
Page 3 of the Motion, paragraph (8), line 2....an elected "pubic" official. Wonder if that is an autocorrect problem, a Freudian slip or both?
How to get the jury to hate you 101.
Notice how the AG acts as though the juror issues in the last case was RSS's fault.
10:41 --
Yes.
BabyChok and Kennuf can still get to them.
to 11;32.......another legal expert. dont quit your day job. when a jury is sequestered by a judge they are not instructed on which side made the request . jackson jambalaya, the official site of bedwetter wanna-be lawyers.
to;HOW TO GET HE JURY TO HATE YOU 101........ you got it all wrong . a hinds county jury would love to be sequestered for a month. nice place to live with an all you can eat buffett 3 x per day. all free. thats just heaven in the hood.
Wow 8:36, what a good point. However, in this case, the venire hasn't been summoned and the story has been picked by local news. So one can assume that a few of the 50-100 summoned will know and will pass the word along. That's why best practice is to file as close to trial date as possible, not when your case is tied up on interlock
There is no way I would be a part of a sequestered jury. I would stand up and openly say that I was biased and had already made up my mind. I would say whatever necessary to get off. No one wants to leave their family and stay locked up in a hotel room for, guess what, nobody knows how many days. This is not a murder trial. It's a trial about the DA and AG both wanting power and control.
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