WA Chief Justice Wayne Martin considers new juror offence after manslaughter trial aborted
A new law to stop jurors researching defendants during trials could be introduced after an aborted manslaughter trial in Western Australia.
The third trial of Ronald Leslie Pennington, 85, over the death of Cariad Anderson-Slater in 1992 was abandoned this week after a juror ignored a direction not to conduct investigations outside the courtroom.
The juror told the court his girlfriend had sent him background information on the case which she had found online.
WA's Chief Justice, Wayne Martin QC, told 720 ABC Perth he was commissioning research into how other jurisdictions dealt with the issue and may recommend a law change to government.
He said all jurors were given clear directions about researching defendants.
"This case and a couple of others we've seen suggest that even that isn't enough, so we need to look at being able to reinforce that by saying that if you do act in contravention of this direction you could be charged," he said.
Justice Martin said research outside the court denied participants procedural fairness.
"The real problem with people going to the internet is that that thwarts the process, denies all the participants in the process of procedural fairness because they don't get the opportunity to test the information that the juror's acting on and we all know there's a lot of stuff on the internet that's just absolute rubbish," he said.
Justice Martin said cases like this were rare but increasing internet use made them more likely.
"As the community gets more and more dependent on the internet, the internet gets more and more pervasive," he said.
"You'd have to say it's got to be more likely, people rely so much on the internet for their sources of information now it's just second nature to them."
Justice Martin said the court did have the power to issue websites orders to take down material relating to trials if necessary.
"The practical problem is that, if you take this case as an example, there is so much material on the web about this case because it's received quite a lot of reports over time," he said.
"So it'd be quite a big job to take down everything off the internet."
Justice Martin said developing a juror-research offence could have the effect of discouraging reporting when it happens.
"Another downside is we rely on people to do their civic duty by turning up and doing jury duty. It's not a good look to start the trial by threatening them," he said.
"It has to be said that happily cases like this are pretty rare - they're not unheard of - but they're pretty rare, so we've got to balance those considerations."