jurors

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has changed the jury instructions that should be given about eyewitness evidence, which is often more fallible than people think, the Boston Globe's Travis Andersen and Martin Finucane report. While the defendant did not get his conviction overturned, the high court has issued new instructions to be used in criminal cases going forward, including "a warning that a witness’s expressed certainty may not indicate accuracy, especially when the witness did not express the same level of certainty when first making the identification. The template also includes commentary on the complexity of recalling past events, the effect of stress on eyewitness identification, the length of time that elapsed between a crime and a person being identified, and issues associated with having a witness view a suspect multiple times during identification procedures. In addition, the instructions allow jurors to consider whether witnesses were exposed to descriptions given by others, including police officers, which 'may inflate the witness’s confidence in the identification.'"

Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas civil court records are not available to the public on-line once trials start out of the concern that jurors will access information they shouldn't know about, like settlements with other defendants, while sitting on cases, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. The dockets are instead available at the judges' chambers. The Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association told the Pittsburgh paper that other methods should be used to control juror misconduct.