To the Editor:
Most of the March 23 letters in “When Jurors Seek Evidence Online” seem to accept the inevitability of jurors’ conducting extrajudicial investigations into the cases on which they are serving.
I am a transactional lawyer, not a trial lawyer, but I am concerned that most of the information those jurors will obtain by searching the Internet or using other modern means of communication will avoid the time-tested means of pursuing justice: cross-examination.
How will a lawyer know what the jurors have discovered? Even if the lawyer finds out, how does he or she cross-examine a blog?
The rules of evidence have been developed over centuries of trial-and-error incremental steps. What we try to achieve through jury trials is justice, not truth. Justice is not simply a search for the truth, but a fair search for the truth, a big difference.
That’s why we don’t allow coerced confessions to be admitted in evidence against a criminal defendant. We may have medical tests to determine whether a coerced confession is true, but it’s excluded because it’s unfair.
Allowing jurors to conduct independent fact investigations violates the principle of fundamental fairness: that the testimony obtained from the witnesses of one party is subject to cross-examination by the other party.
Peter L. Wanger
Bloomfield Hills, Mich., March 24, 2009
