"aggravating", Would you like to buy a vowel? Options

[PalePhoenix]

Just so you're aware, there are six in "Moussaoui."

Juror Looks Up Word and Finds Trouble
Judge Decides Research at Home Wasn't Intentional Violation of Order

The juror told the judge yesterday that he was sitting at home with his 9-year-old son when he decided to look up a word -- a word that, depending on how it was interpreted, could mean life or death for Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

Leafing through his son's dictionary, the juror found the definition of "aggravating": to intensify or to strengthen, to increase. Yesterday, he returned to the jury room in Moussaoui's death penalty trial and started to share his findings when another juror stopped him. "Oh, that could be research," the other juror said.

As it turned out, the juror's extracurricular research Thursday night had been forbidden by the judge. When jurors on Tuesday asked whether they could have a dictionary, she told them they were not allowed to do any independent investigating at home.

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema questioned the juror yesterday and concluded that there was "no intentional or material" violation of her order. She admonished the entire jury to follow her instructions and consider only evidence heard in court, then allowed them to resume deliberations.

The errant juror, known only as Juror No. 402, told Brinkema at a hearing that he had thought her instructions only meant that they couldn't do research on the Internet. "I was sitting with my 9-year-old. He had a dictionary there," he said, according to a transcript. "I didn't even think about it. I looked it up to see if it confirmed what I thought it was."

When he told other jurors that he had looked up "aggravating," someone said, "Oh, that could be research," the juror said. He said he never discussed with other jurors what he saw in the dictionary and quickly sent a note to Brinkema alerting her to the problem.

The juror's nighttime research touched on the key issue confronting the panel, which is weighing the aggravating factors that prosecutors say justify a death sentence for Moussaoui against mitigating factors that defense attorneys argue mean his life should be spared. Among the aggravating factors to be determined is whether Moussaoui was responsible for the nearly 3,000 deaths on Sept. 11. Mitigating factors include whether sentencing him to death would make him a martyr.

As Brinkema explained again yesterday to the 12-member panel, deliberations could be skewed if one juror knows more than the rest. "What that would do is change your role as jurors," she said. "You would then become advocates for one side or the other."

With more than 80,000 jury trials in the United States each year and a million sworn jurors, it is rare for them to violate a judge's instructions, Munsterman said. But he said the Internet and the communications revolution have created new temptations. In one recent example, Munsterman said, a Texas juror used the Internet to look up a defendant's criminal record, which was inadmissible. Another juror used his cellphone from the jury room to call his lawyer and ask for the definition of reasonable doubt.

(accent mine)

OMGWTF, jurors--in this or any other trial--can't use a bloody dictionary? Who are they kidding? In a recent course on Psychology & Law, it seemed like the seminar's consensus was that we needed more informed juries, not people yanked in off the street with whatever knowledge they happened to have at the time. Where do you sit on this one? Is the literal definition of a word "research," and--if so or not--does looking one up equate with calling a lawyer or getting a criminal history?

[IndigoBiatch]

I feel that forbidding the use of a dictionary goes a little too far.

Words can have a different meaning in legal terms than they have in the way they are used outside of a courtroom. For someone to ask for a dictionary to clarify the use of the word in legal context should be expected.

The internet...thats another story...

[xSirRealx]

Hey Phoenix,

Trial courts in the United States are allowed to engineer thought by a jury, but in limited ways. A juror's job is to reach a conclusion, using only those premesis which are presented in court. The limitation of premesis presented in court are done to admit only relevant, reliable, and admissible evidence for consideration by a jury.

First to differentiate; Evidence presented to a jury may be rightly curtailed, in order to protect the rights of an accused. For instance, if a confession is beaten out of a suspect, there is a violation of 5th amendment rights, and, while the confession may be actual evidence of wrongdoing, it is not "legally admissible evidence", and the jury will not be made privy to it. Thus, it would be harmful for a juror to do "research out of court", talking to cops and so forth about the confession, because the juror would be essentially violationg an accused's 5th Amendment rights - a juror's conclusions would be drawn from evidence which is not "legally admissible" evidence.

In a similar vein, legal definitions and common "dictionary" definitions often differ. Many times, commonplace words are used in the law, but are actually defined by statute to demonstrate their accepted legal meaning and usage. Thus, there could be a problem in ensuring a fair trial should the "legal" and common definitions differ from one another. This is especially so, because, contrary to a legal definition found in statute, which is essentially an immutable definition ascribed by a legislature, a dictionary is only a report. In other words, a dictionary is not an authority on how a word is properly used, legal or otherwise, it is only a report on how a word IS being used, and thus, especially in this instance, must be ancillary to a definition found in law.

To finish, then, should clarification be needed by a jury, it should be given, but under the patronage of the court.

This post has been edited by xSirRealx: May 1 2006, 10:53 AM

[PalePhoenix]

Hey Phoenix,

Trial courts in the United States are allowed to engineer thought by a jury, but in limited ways. A juror's job is to reach a conclusion, using only those premesis which are presented in court. The limitation of premesis presented in court are done to admit only relevant, reliable, and admissible evidence for consideration by a jury.

Hi, SirReal.

No, I'm not disputing any of that (or should I say, "I'll stipulate to all of it?"). It just seems as if a dictionary shouldn't represent "new" or unintroduced information. It should already be part of an educated person's intellectual arsenal. Problem is, and I do realize this is one of the lines you're drawing, the people who serve on juries are not necessarily educated. I tend to think this worse for our judicial system, but then, we don't need to move on to splitting hairs about what a "peer" is. For some reason, our legal process wants them in a vacuum from the moment they're chosen to sit. Voir dire for terrorists must be a real hoot.

I guess what I'm presuming, or proposing, is that having an unabridged American English dictionary available seems like it should be the least of anyone's concerns. What of closing arguments, what of expert testimony, or of the judge's directions? All these could be sources of dangerously big words.