Courtroom dramas such as Law & Order usually feature lawyers delivering impassioned arguments to jurors who sit on the margin of the courtroom and whose names are never known to the audience. In real life, jurors are not marginal figures at all. They are arguably the most important participants in a criminal trial because they are responsible for determining the defendant’s guilt or innocence. And they typically are not anonymous. Jurors’ names usually become part of the public record along with other information that is relevant to their ability to decide the case impartially. Importantly, this information usually comes out at the beginning of a trial, when the jury is selected.
However, last month, the federal district judge presiding over the criminal trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich ruled that the names and identities of the jurors in that case would continue to be kept secret from the public until the end of the trial. The decision by Judge James B. Zagel is unfortunate because it treats the potential abuse of e-mail, Facebook and other Internet social media by meddlers and malcontents as a new, compelling reason to restrict the public’s right to information about jurors’ names and identities. We should have less anxiety about the popularity of e-mail, blogs and social media and more confidence in the tradition of openness that has defined our criminal justice system for decades.
