A "highly intelligent" juror in Britain who discovered on the internet that a defendant in a criminal trial had previously been charged with rape was jailed for six months yesterday for contempt of court.
Dr Theodora Dallas, 34, a Greek-born psychology lecturer, "deliberately disobeyed" the judge's direction that she mustnot do independent research.
Three judges sitting at the High Court in London, including Lord Igor Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, said that the threat to justice posed by her actions was serious and that the use of the internet by any juror meant jail was "virtually inevitable".
Dallas told her fellow jurors sitting in a case of grievous bodily harm at Luton Crown Court last July that she had found a newspaper report of a previous trial in which the defendant Barry Medlock had been accused and acquitted of rape - evidence which was not given in court. A fellow juror reported her remarks to the judge who aborted the trial. Medlock was later convicted and jailed in a new trial.
The academic, who is suffering from depression after being forced to resign her post from the University of Bedfordshire, claimed she had misunderstood the judge's direction. She said she sometimes struggled to grasp English. She claimed she had been checking the meaning of grievous bodily harm when she saw the report.
The judge described her as "a highly intelligent woman, extremely articulate in English" but said the time of the other jury members had been wasted and the public was put to additional unnecessary expense. The complainant was also forced to give evidence of his ordeal twice.
