Out of all the characters in a courthouse drama, jury members are one of the most fascinating. They’re enormously influential on a trial, for obvious reasons, but trials can be enormously influential on them as well. After the explosive Casey Anthony case, for example, some jurors up and moved out of town, even after the judge declared a “cooling off” period before their names could be released to the public.

Joey Stipek, who will soon be interning with me at the Student Press Law Center, didn’t face such a controversial case. “I had no problem with the verdict,” he said. “We voted guilty and the whole process of deliberation was about 45 minutes.”

Stipek was charged, along with 11 of his peers, with judging an embezzlement case in his hometown of Brooklyn. “It was my first and only time in a courtroom,” he said.

Still, he said he felt like the lawyers sufficiently explained the charges and the case, so he wasn’t overwhelmed. As someone who has watched many times from the sidelines, I know a courtroom can be a bizarre environment – but that probably depends on the case, the lawyers, the judge – the other members of the courthouse dramatis personae.

One year ago, I excitedly wrote that Missouri might be updating its rules on technology allowed in the courtroom. A committee within the Missouri Press-Bar Commission is preparing recommendations on this issue for the Missouri Supreme Court.

That’s the good news. The bad news? One year later, they’re still working on those recommendations.

“We are still studying the issue,” committee member Jean Maneke said. “These things always move very slowly.”

I couldn’t reach the Supreme Court’s communications counsel for comment.

Currently, no tweeting, typing or recording is allowed in courtrooms according to Missouri’s Court Operating Rule 16. One still camera, one video camera and one audio recording device is allowed with preapproval from the court’s media coordinator.

I guess in a society where technology moves like lightning and courts move like molasses, this is bound to happen. Let’s hope for better next year.

An amicus curiae is a “friend of the court” – a person, unrelated to the proceedings of a case, who submits information of their own volition. I’m just a friend of the curious. Go here for the whole amicus curious blog.

Happy 50th anniversary, public defenders! You don’t look a day over 40. Except actually, you do, because you’re constantly overworked and underfunded. You look like you could use some sleep and maybe a vacation.

Fifty years ago today, the Supreme Court ruled on one of its most significant cases ever: Gideon v. Wainwright. It might sound incredible, but before 1963, if people couldn’t hire a lawyer, they were left to defend themselves in court. It didn’t work out too well for them.

Now, the state hires lawyers for their poor residents. Not in federal cases, though. And not civil cases, either, just criminal ones. And only if they’re facing possible jail time for those cases. And even then, due to funding and staffing limitations, they might be spending months and months and months in jail before they actually see a lawyer.

But anyway, happy 50th, public defense system! You might be seeing some major changes this year, when the Supreme Court decides how long each state is required to keep paying someone’s defense.

P.S. The NYT celebrated by sharing their original article on the Gideon decision from 1963 on DocumentCloud.

An amicus curiae is a “friend of the court” – a person, unrelated to the proceedings of a case, who submits information of their own volition. I’m just a friend of the curious. Go here for the whole amicus curious blog.

For a long, long time, I had “interview a court spectator” on my list of ideas for this blog. I finally did, and it wasn’t what I expected.

“Court spectator” isn’t a real term- it’s something I made up to describe the people who just sit in a courtroom, watching a case they don’t have a personal stake in. You see them sometimes. I wonder who they are. An old guy with nothing better to do in his retired days? A lady who’s taken nosy neighboring to the next level?

I talked to Burton McDuffy, a man I met at a domestic assault trial last month. McDuffy was there to, as he put it, see what would happen if he were in that situation. It turns out that McDuffy is facing domestic assault charges of his own.

He told me about his dad beating his mom when he was growing up. He told me the story of the last time he was arrested. “I know I have to walk away, but I don’t want to walk away,” McDuffy confessed.

It took me by surprise that he was sharing this with me. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would be a defendant in a case of his own. I just kept taking notes, asking questions and trying to be sensitive.

The defendant in the case we had been watching was convicted of a class A felony, meaning he would be going away for 10 years or more.

“If I don’t want no trouble,” McDuffy said, “I don’t want to go that far with (my family).”

“It gets rough sometimes,” he said.

I wasn’t sure what to do with his interview, since I’m not actively working on a story about domestic violence. So I wrote it in a blog post.

An amicus curiae is a “friend of the court” – a person, unrelated to the proceedings of a case, who submits information of their own volition. I’m just a friend of the curious. Go here for the whole amicus curious blog.

This week I and another new reporter on the Missourian’s public safety beat went to visit our county’s Chief Jailer. Our editor suggested the meeting, which had no firm purpose, as a way to get to know people who would be our chief sources in the next couple months.

I agreed that it was a good idea, but up until we didn’t he interview, I didn’t know how good an idea. Warren Brewer, the jailer ended up giving me a whole list of possible sources for another ongoing story of mine. It’s not exactly jail related, so I was surprised, but it was certainly helpful.

There was another incident last week where a guy I was chatting with in a courthouse hallway ended up being a very interesting source later. Neither of those interviews had what I would call a “point,” but they were both fascinating. And any conversation giving you background on your subject is useful, whether or not it is what the intelligence community (at least in TV shows) call “actionable intelligence” – it’s still information.