Could a juror research legal or scientific information online to assist him in rendering his verdict? Before anyone asks I am not a juror, I'm not researching things during a case, I promise I'm not being contemptuous inside or out of a court :) There are a number of strict rules about what a juror can do during a trial. He can't talk to others about the case itself, look up more details about what happened in the case, or try to investigate the case itself. There are good reasons for all of this. I'm wondering though if there is any room for any kind of research within those rules in his attempt to be the best juror he can be? So lets look at the 'most forgivable' attempt a juror could attempt to try to help him make a decision. If A juror, in the evenings between trial dates, were to research legal theory and presidents relevant to the trial he is a juror on, but nothing about the specific case, would this be permissible for him to do? For example say our juror felt the (often deliberately obfuscated by one of the lawyers as I understand) instruction given to the jury prior to the start of the case was so confusing he didn't know what his responsibilities were, so he tried to look up what the jury legal expectations online. Or as another example maybe he vaguely recalled something about jury nullification being possible and wanted to argue for it in this case, but first researched the particulars about when and how a jury was allowed to nullify a case. Would this potentially be considered permissible? Moving on to an even 'greyer' level, what if the Juror were to read about a scientific principle that could be relevant to how he would vote online, without asking about any of the specifics of his case? lets say a mother is on trial for causing her babies death and one expert says they are 100% certain the death was caused SIDs or some other disorder and there is no way the mother was responsible and the other expert says there is no way that SIDs could be responsible and the evidence is clear that the mother killed the child. If our Juror felt like he didn't know enough about SIDs to have any idea which expert he should believe and decided to hope on the Wikipedia page on SIDs and read about it in more detail in hopes of being better able to judge which expert's testimony felt more logical afterwards is there any chance this could be permissible? And to throw out an almost certainly not allowed example, if the Juror looked up the two experts and saw that one was highly respected and the other has been accused of accepting high fee's to provide expert testimony that happens to fit whatever the lawyer wants to prove, causing our Juror to rule for the side with the more respected expert, I'm guessing he would get removed?
The most innocent of your scenarios is "against the rules", so less innocent acts fair worse. The idea behind researching legal theory and precedent (presumably not presidents) is that surely it is good for a juror to know what the law is. But that thinking is wrong. The judge will instruct you as to what the law is, and will also instruct you that "the law" is limited to what he says it is. I will draw on the instructions for an antitrust case, Best Buy v. Toshiba, HannStar. The core instruction is: It is your duty to find the facts from all the evidence in the case. To those facts you will apply the law as I give it to you. The preliminary instructions (the pattern instructions for California civil trials) say the same basic thing: At the end of the trial, I will explain the law that you must follow to reach your verdict. You must follow the law as I explain it to you, even if you do not agree with the law. The judge instructs the jury that: When a party has the burden of proof on any claim or affirmative defense by a preponderance of the evidence, it means you must be persuaded by the evidence that the claim or affirmative defense is more probably true than not true. Your research might find alternative statements of the law out there, which seem entirely plausible. That doesn't matter: you have to set aside whatever ideas (about the law) that you've gotten from anybody besides the judge. In fact, if the judge makes a (serious) mistake and rules against a party in a manner that is contrary to established law, and you know this (it doesn't matter how), you are supposed to apply the law (including rulings during trial as to admissibility) as given to you by the judge. As for a case of a juror knowing that the judge was mistaken (specifically, knowing based on his pre-existing knowledge of statutes and case law – not based on forbidden research during a trial), we can get the "should" from the absolute instruction to follow the judges instructions. Additionally, if you read transcripts of voir dire (not a trivial task), you can observe judges probing attorneys who happen to be in the prospective pool, asking questions to determine whether that person can just do as they are told. But it would be difficult to establish a "hard rule". There never will be an instruction that says "You must follow my orders even if you know for a fact that my orders are wrong" – jury instructions never admit the possibility of judicial error.
It is not as simple as the witness just making the assertion that they are the killer. They will be subject to grueling cross examination to break their story. If the victim was killed at a specific time, perhaps the prosecution can prove the witness was somewhere else at that time, and therefore lying. (No Opportunity) If the victim was killed with a specific weapon, perhaps the prosecution can prove that only the accused had the weapon, and the witness had no access to it, and therefore lying. (No Means) If the victim was killed in a specific way, perhaps the witness doesn't know any of the details of how the crime happened, and therefore is not credible. (No Knowledge) If the accused's DNA is found at the scene, and their shirt is covered in blood, and the witness has no corroborating evidence against them, then the witness is likely lying. (No Evidence) If the witness claims he is the murderer, the prosecution can inquire as to why he killed the victim. The real murderer had a reason: Perhaps money, power, hatred, passion, etc, that the witness may not be able to provide. (No Motive) Planting doubt in the mind of a jury is an effective defense. But lying about who did what, when, how, and why it is not as easy as you suggest.
Yes, there is a good chance. Ordinarily, the law as written is what is enforced. On occasion, the wording of the law is actually ambiguous, or vague, which means that the jury will need an instruction as to how to interpret the law. In fact, juries are not literally read the statute, they are given a set of decision-making instructions so that they can decide "If we find X, we must acquit; if we find Y we may convict". Your attorney will, if he is diligent, note the problem and strive for an instruction that favors the client. (The prosecution will of course object). Eventually, on appeal, a court will decide what the law "really means", and that decision might be strictly based on the letter of the law, or it might be based on a supposed spirit of the law, i.e. what the legislature "originally intended". That outcome is determined in part by the jurisprudential ideology of the prevailing justices of the appeals court. Usually, letter of the law prevails until a higher court rules that a particular "spirit" is what was originally intended.
The legal question is whether you can be convicted of a crime under the laws of some jurisdiction on earth. I'll start by assuming that you are in a jurisdiction where you can legally possess firearms and carry them in public. Since you added &quot;and commits suicide&quot;, I assume you're not asking if it is a crime to drop a firearm, the question is just criminal culpability for this consequence. Now we will zoom into the laws of a specific jurisdiction, Washington state. RCW 9A.36.060 says A person is guilty of promoting a suicide attempt when he or she knowingly causes or aids another person to attempt suicide. The question then is whether your act &quot;knowingly causes or aids&quot; an attempted suicide. You turn to the jury instructions to see what that means: A person knows or acts knowingly or with knowledge with respect to a [fact] [circumstance] [or] [result] when he or she is aware of that [fact] [circumstance] [or] [result]. [It is not necessary that the person know that the [fact] [circumstance] [or] [result] is defined by law as being unlawful or an element of a crime.] If a person has information that would lead a reasonable person in the same situation to believe that a fact exists, the jury is permitted but not required to find that he or she acted with knowledge of that fact. [When acting knowingly [as to a particular fact] is required to establish an element of a crime, the element is also established if a person acts intentionally [as to that fact].] The outcome depends on specific circumstances. For example, &quot;accidentally and unknowingly drop and leave&quot; will not sustain a conviction. &quot;Intentionally drop and leave&quot; could, but you would also have to other information connecting the suicide to the availability of a weapon. If you intentionally drop and leave a firearm at a shooting range, a reasonable person would not think &quot;OMG someone might see this weapon and kill themselves with it! Hahaha!&quot;. You can spin a yarn where you know that Smith is suicidal and will kill himself if he has a weapon, so that dropping the gun off constitutes &quot;knowingly aiding&quot;.
There are circumstances in which medical ethics historically authorized treating physicians to defer sharing information with patients or even to mislead them in their best interests medically, although the scope of what is considered ethical in that regard is narrowing. But in the fact pattern described in the quoted material there is no plausible way that this withholding of information could be justified. If it was intentional (or for that matter, even if it was negligent) there could be grounds for tort liability for harm caused as a result (although causation and damages are hard to prove). On the other hand, just because it could give rise to tort liability, doesn't imply that the action is necessarily a crime, at least without some kind of motive other than random spite to intentionally provide a false result. However, it is quite difficult to come up with a believable reason that this would happen to someone at random. If the person taking the test bribed someone to provide a false result, which is plausible, that is one thing, but just doing it randomly really doesn't make any sense. The fact pattern provided sounds like it doesn't include the &quot;full story.&quot; Why keep records of the actual test results (or for that matter why do the actual tests at all) if you are merely going to intentionally provide a false negative?
This is, in effect a defense of mistaken identity, and an assertion that the person on trial is not in fact the person who committed the crime. It is not legally significantly different from a case where the defendant claims that a witness has identified the wrong person. Exactly how the defense would be conducted would depend on what evidence establishes that &quot;Herschel Greenbaum&quot; committed the crime, and what evidence establishes (or disproves) that the defendant on trial is that same Herschel Greenbaum. The purpose of a trial is to establish or fail to establish the guilt of the person actually on trial, normally the person present in the courtroom. (trials do not establish innocence in the US). &quot;The defendant&quot; is the person actually on trial, even if an incorrect name has been used in bringing the charge. In such a case people would need to be careful about evidence that applies to a person named &quot;Herschel Greenbaum&quot; but might not apply to the defendant actually on trial.
This seems to be a mix of question about law and a meta-question about this site, but I'll treat it as an on-topic question about law. The author of a question, or answer, owns the copyright to their contributions, and they can re-publish to their heart's content. Any user who posts here grants a license to SE and other users to use content posted here, so I don't have to ask you permission to quote you. As part of the permission granted by SE to use this website, you have agreed to &quot;follow the rules&quot; set by SE. There are many rules, some spelled out more clearly that others. For example, if you post a question, you indirectly agreed that your content can be upvoted or down-voted. Certain content can be &quot;closed&quot; and deleted, when the content is deemed to violate the rules in particular ways (is spam, porn, abuse, or judged to be poor-quality). Judgment (on different matters) can be rendered by community managers, moderators, or other users. The agreement is here, see especially here. If we take the post that you linked to, it is quite possible that it was deleted because it is not a general legal question, in violation of the acceptable use policy. If you want a historical analysis of your particular case, it should be asked on Law Meta.
Yes. This is legal. See, e.g. SPARF v.U.S. 156 U.S. 51 (1895); U.S. vs Moylan, 417 F 2d 1002, 1006 (4th Cir. 1969); U.S. v. Krzyske, 836 F.2d 1013 (6th Cir. 1988) (&quot;the jury asked the judge about jury nullification. The judge responded, &quot;There is no such thing as valid jury nullification.&quot; The jury convicted the defendant. On appeal, the majority and the dissent agreed that the trial judge's instruction was untrue, but the majority held that this false representation was not a reversible error.&quot;). Indeed, procedurally, the system is specifically designed to prevent courts from even considering such a question. See also, e.g. People v. Iannicelli, 2019 CO 80, § 2 (Colo. 2019) (holding no crime was committed) (&quot;Defendants Mark Iannicelli and Eric Brandt stood in the plaza square adjacent to the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver and asked people entering the courthouse whether they were reporting for jury duty. If any of these people answered affirmatively, then Iannicelli and Brandt would hand them one or more brochures discussing the concept of jury nullification, which the brochures defined as the process by which a jury in a criminal case acquits the defendant regardless of whether he or she has broken the law in question. As a result of this conduct, the People charged Iannicelli and Brandt with multiple counts of jury tampering&quot;) This is deeply entwined with the U.S. law interpretation of the Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy Clause's protections, which prohibit a retrial or appeal following a judgment of acquittal, which have been incorporated by the U.S. Supreme Court as applicable in state courts as well.