June 12's Wall Street Journal included an article by Ashby Jones and Nathan Koppel about the recurring issue of whether a judge should shield jury members' names from the media during a trial. The article begins with reference to Rob Blagojevich's trial, where the judge is being forced to consider whether to withhold the jurors' names from the media. Federal Judge Zagel, who is hearing the case, ruled that the juror names would be withheld from the media out of fear that bloggers (hello!) or other media members (whether officially of the press or not) would try contacting the jurors. Obviously, the fear that the jurors would be contacted is based on the right to a fair an impartial jury. As that constitutional right as been interpreted, a fair an impartial jury includes jurors who are not spilling the trial's proverbial beans to outsiders, having contact with outsiders about the case, discussing the case among themselves before deliberations, or doing their own research about the facts of the case. When a juror is contacted about an on-going case, the constitutional hackles will rise on a defense attorney's back.
As the article points out, the US Supreme Court has not directly ruled on whether jurors should or should not have their names kept from the public. This silence permits a wide range of discretion among the local, state, and federal judges across the country.
The arguments in favor of keeping juror names from the media include the fear of the juror's safety (I'm thinking of jurors hearing abortion cases, racially- or other hate-motivated crime cases, and high-profile cases like Timothy McVeigh) and preserving the sanctity of the trial. A lot of people think there is no danger in being a juror, but it wasn't too long ago when segregation was a way of life, and to find an accused black man not guilty of a crime he did not commit against a white female victim would have been unheard of. Even today, the number of African-American inmates on death row greatly exceeds the number of white inmates in the same situation. Race plays a role in trials even today. Since people behave according to sheep mentality, it is easy to foresee how revealing a juror's name in a high-emotion case could make the jurors and their families nervous, especially if the verdict is not what was expected.
Addressing the need to protect the sanctity of the trial, I purport that today's media does not know boundaries and cannot recognize serious consequences. A courtroom need not be a spectacle, and with today's reality shows covering the television channels, it is in the interest of all who have a stake in the trial to preserve its sanctity and recognize its importance. If the jurors are having to worry about how they are going to appear on television, what is going to be posted about them online on facebook and twitter and myspace, and how their role in the trial will effect their future, the defendant is not receiving a fair trial.
Two arguments for never protecting a juror's name are the need for media to check and balance the courts and the need to create statistics and demographics of a trial for research. The argument that media is to serve as a check and balance seems absurd at first, but the transparency of government and its workings is very in vogue. Think of the Sunshine laws, and how notices must be given if two people from the same government committee are going to be discussing issues pertinent to that committee. The reason is to permit the public to know what is going on and be able to serve as a check for cloak and dagger politics. Theoretically, then, the argument could be extended that although trials are already public by their nature, the juror's names should also always be public knowledge so the citizens at large can provide an additional measure of protecting the parties' constitutional rights. In support of this argument, I invite you to consider the Maryland case mentioned in the WSJ article about the jurors who were friending each other on Facebook and holding discussions on Facebook about the case prior to deliberations certainly. The retrial was avoided because the defendant took a plea deal, but it certainly casts the jury's room into broad daylight. I love this idea of the media, which in large part turned from reporting the major political, international, economic, and scientific issues of any given day to reporting about Lady Gaga's most recent outfits and highjinks pulled at a baseball game, as being the guardian for United States citizens' constitutional rights.
In addition, there is a viable claim that the juror's names need to be released so research can be done about the jurors before, during, and after trial. I think the obvious answer to this claim is that the attorneys involved in the case would know the jurors' names, but the media would be the one excluded. Thus, the concern about researching jurors before and during the trial would be limited to the parties involved, which is a legitimate restriction when faced with other strong concerns for reasons to protect the jurors' names. As for after the trial, I think the restriction would be lifted, which would permit for plenty of research to be done. Moreover, any preliminary research might be completed during the trial with released juror demographics, which is really what any researcher wants, as opposed to jurors' names.
I think it says a lot about our society in that we still fear tainted juries. Before, we worried about them because of racially-driven hatred, and now we are concerned about jurors logging onto social networks and being bombarded with questions for the latest juicy courtroom gossip. In this lust-crazed, attention-seeking society, being called for jury duty has moved ordinary citizens into positions of power where they are being sought after to reveal the latest news. It can be a tempting offer for someone seeking fifteen minutes of fame. In the name of constitutional protection and the need to afford a defendant a fair trial, a judge should have the power to protect the jurors' names from the media.
