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Crime The Courts The Internet Bitcoin

There's a Problem In the Silk Road Trial: the Jury Doesn't Get the Internet 303

sarahnaomi (3948215) writes "The trial began this week for Ross Ulbricht, the 30-year-old Texas man accused of being the mastermind behind the dark net drug market, Silk Road. But as the jury began hearing testimony in the case, it was clear the technological knowledge gap would impede the proceedings. Judge Katherine Forrest said right off the bat when the case began that "highly technical" issues must be made clear to the jury. "If I believe things are not understandable to the average juror, we will talk about what might be a reasonable way to proceed at that time," she said. After the first day of proceedings, Forrest told the prosecution to be more clear with explanations of concepts central to the case, noting she was unhappy with its "mumbo-jumbo" explanation of the anonymizing service Tor. She also requested all readings of chat transcripts include emoticons."
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There's a Problem In the Silk Road Trial: the Jury Doesn't Get the Internet

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  • Peers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:15AM (#48819583)

    If we're to believe that Ross Ulbricht is really a internet and tor mastermind surely a Jury of his peers would require some sort of technical experience. While this might not require someone to be a professional, it should require some level of subject matter experience. It does make me wonder, what other "for cause" jury selection criteria was also avoided?

    • Re:Peers? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:03PM (#48820207)

      Everyone in the US is a peer of everyone else. It has NOTHING to do with your 'profressional' status or any other such bullshit. Or do you think a banker accused of stealing from his customers should only be judged by other bankers? An accused rapist should only be judged by men?

    • If we're to believe that Ross Ulbricht is really a internet and tor mastermind surely a Jury of his peers would require some sort of technical experience.

      Oh, hell.

      Ulbrich isn't a master criminal mastermind --- he's just another greedy, babble-mouthed, geek with a handful of technical tricks and an ego the size of the planet.

  • Jury of your peers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mbone ( 558574 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:16AM (#48819589)

    Maybe, in cases like this, the notion of a "jury of your peers" should be extended to include technical competence. In other words, instead of asking the prospective jurors about their views on the death penalty, they could ask about their knowledge of DNS or BGP.

    • by Enry ( 630 )

      So who serves on juries of those who are mentally unstable, or politicians (or am I repeating myself?)

      • by jythie ( 914043 )
        That is a legitimate question and one I kinda wish our jury system would catch up to. There are all sorts of criminal trials where the verdict depends on the random shaft of how much some individuals know about a field. For instance, one's views on mental illness tend to be drastically different when, say, the only such people one knows are TV characters as opposed to friends and family.
    • by Zocalo ( 252965 )
      That sounds like it ought to be a good idea - actual peers rather than essentially random people - but I'm not sure that would actually work too well for the lawyers. Essentially one side, whether they realise it or not, is trying to "prove" something that is incorrect; at a simple level a defendant can't be both innocent and guilty of the same accusation (jokes about Schroedinger's cat aside). In situations where the prosecution's lawyers know that their case is a house of cards or the defendant's lawyer
    • by ledow ( 319597 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#48819765) Homepage

      Don't think of the easy solution, think of the worst-case scenario.

      For instance, now you have gun-cases juried only by people knowledgeable about - and presumably pro - weapons. Or finance cases juried only by people who work in finance. Or cases against the judiciary juried by the judiciary themselves.

      The idea of a jury is to be "the man on the street". If you can't explain the crime committed to the man on the street, when he's forced to do nothing BUT listen to you for weeks on end, then maybe that law is too complex to enforce anyway.

      Juries are, and always have been, required to understand things way out of their normal scopes. Any half-decent defence/prosecution will get them to the level of knowledge they need quickly. Imagine juries on complex financial fraud cases, or in cases steeped in the interpretation of thousands of separate by-laws. It has to be done, it can be done, and if you can't do it then you won't find much of a career as a lawyer.

      If you can't explain the crime committed in simple enough terms for average people to get their head around within a matter of weeks, how do you expect average people to stay on the right side of the law in their daily lives?

      Tor can be explained quite quickly. I could get a bunch of schoolkids to understand it in an hour, with zero computing knowledge at all. To get that into the heads of a bunch of non-computing 60-year-olds will take longer but not THAT much longer.

      And, at the end of the day, even the judge has to understand what case they are trying. If they don't, they can't possibly guide the jury if they are ever required to.

      If you or your opposition can't explain why what you did was, or was not, illegal in a matter of weeks to the majority of a bunch of average people, then the case is so grey-area that it's likely to collapse anyway.

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        For instance, now you have gun-cases juried only by people knowledgeable about - and presumably pro - weapons. Or finance cases juried only by people who work in finance. Or cases against the judiciary juried by the judiciary themselves.

        There are plenty of people such as retired army and other law enforcement personnel, antiques dealers, pawn brokers, etc that would have extensive knowledge of guns and not necessarily have a strong political opinion on gun rights for or against.

        The idea of a jury is to be "the man on the street". If you can't explain the crime committed to the man on the street, when he's forced to do nothing BUT listen to you for weeks on end, then maybe that law is too complex to enforce anyway.

        Juries are, and always have been, required to understand things way out of their normal scopes. Any half-decent defence/prosecution will get them to the level of knowledge they need quickly. Imagine juries on complex financial fraud cases, or in cases steeped in the interpretation of thousands of separate by-laws. It has to be done, it can be done, and if you can't do it then you won't find much of a career as a lawyer.

        The problem isn't teaching them so much as their in ability to assess truthfulness. I could make lots of very misleading statements on tor to someone who knows nothing or very little about it. The jury does not get to ask questions. If they find a statement to so

        • There are plenty of people such as retired army and other law enforcement personnel, antiques dealers, pawn brokers, etc that would have extensive knowledge of guns and not necessarily have a strong political opinion on gun rights for or against.

          I guess you didn't understand what ledow meant when he wrote, "think of the worst-case scenario".

        • Jurors, at least in the USA, are able to ask questions during a trial. They can't ask them directly while court is in session but they are allowed and sometimes encouraged to relay questions in written form to the judge.

          The case I sat as a juror for we didn't end up needing to ask any questions because the judge asked them all when the lawyers on both sides appeared to be incapable of doing so.

      • For instance, now you have gun-cases juried only by people knowledgeable about - and presumably pro - weapons.

        I can imagine a jury of informed gun people laughing at the definitions of "assault" weapons, that are virtually identical to other weapons in all the ways that really matter, but are illegal simply because "it looks dangerous".

        But then again, when you have Diane Feintein saying that a certain configuration of an otherwise acceptable deer hunting rifle makes it "legal to hunt humans" (yes, she said that), you end up with a law based on hysterics.

    • by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:31AM (#48819785)

      There is currently a big debate within legal circles in the UK as to what to do about juries in complex fraud cases, where its near to impossible to explain to a lay person actually was, and how it was conducted, because they have no understanding of major international financial markets.

      One proposal is to have a board of judges which are well versed in the financial profession sit in such cases without a jury, which understandably makes some people uneasy.

      Jury-less cases have been heard in the UK as far back as the 1970s when related to terrorism offences, where the offence was of a complex type (eg, financial in nature - funding and money laundering for terrorist groups in Northern Ireland) or where there has been a history of proven jury tampering.

      A proposal gathering speed is to include level of education and area of employment in jury selection, so rather than a completely random jury you do indeed get a jury which has a greater understanding of the specifics involved.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        where its near to impossible to explain to a lay person

        If there is a law that the majority of people do not understand - either because it is too complex to understand (unlikely) or because nobody is good at explaining it (more likely) - then there is a problem with the law. I'd go further an argue that if a person of reasonable intelligence cannot defend themselves, i.e. if a person has a better chance of winning a case depending on the lawyer they pay for, then the law cannot deliver justice.

        The exceptions to jury trial that have existed in the UK are usually

        • If there is a law that the majority of people do not understand - either because it is too complex to understand (unlikely) or because nobody is good at explaining it (more likely) - then there is a problem with the law.

          You are assuming the problem is with the law, when in many cases the problem is not with the law but rather with what the defendant did to break the law.

          Its very well to say "trying to gain monetary reward through dishonesty is illegal" rather than having complex fraud laws - but you still have to explain to a jury just how that ponzi scheme that spans 15 shell companies, 8 futures markets, 4 currency markets and 32 bank accounts and involves moving pennies around several million times a day or purchasing 3

        • by anagama ( 611277 )

          Your thinking is what fuels the divide in punishments between the thug who mugs a person for $63, and the Wall Street bankster who mugs the nation for trillions. Your inner-chimp can understand instinctually why mugging a person is wrong, and why the law should be against it -- the complex multi-layered fancy suit wearing type of mugging however, is completely incomprehensible on that instinctual level.

      • by DrXym ( 126579 )
        The upside of doing this is it would speed up certain kinds of trial where the alternative is to spend months or years in trial because the matters are so complex and the possibility of mistrial increases as jurors drop out.
    • That you have a right to a "Jury of your peers" is a misunderstanding; it is nowhere in the U.S. Constitution. That concept was a British common law one, established by the Magna Carta, wherein nobles would be tried with a jury composed of nobles, and commoners with a jury of commoners. Since titles of nobility, etc. are blocked by U.S. Constitution, that means everyone is a "commoner", so everyone is your peer.

      However, if I ever found myself being prosecuted, I would certainly much rather the jurors be com

    • by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      No, it is a fucking stupid idea and anyone who thinks it is a good idea is an idiot.

      Lets say you have a fund manager (say Bernie Madoff) who is accused of mishandling the clients money and enriching himself. Who should be on the jury, other fund managers? You have just created a situation where there basically are no enforcable laws.

      If you want a real life example of how stupid an idea this is, look no farther than the police. Ever hear of a cop getting a traffic ticket? Of course not. As soon as they

    • In US jury trials, there are almost never any jurors really knowledgeable about the topic of the trial, if the topic is of any complexity. These candidate experts are reliably weeded by by peremptory challenges during the jury selection by the side with the weaker arguments.

      This is a perennial problem with US patent trials with regular international repercussions: Every other civilized nation lets expert judges decide these trials, the US uses farmer jurors from certain Eastern Texas districts who are quick

    • However is slashdot is any indication. It may be hard to find bias jury of peers on technical topics.
      The amount of passion I have seen about topic like Text Editors, Operating Systems, Programming Languages, Data interchange formats... It may be hard to pick a jury of people who knows about this stuff, however is able to make an unbiased opinion from the facts.

      Lets say we were jury for a hacking case.
      Bias one: Many people feel that hackers are justified because it was the victim's fault for not having supe

  • My read so far based on the video blogpost I saw on http://beta.watchmybit.com last night is that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence and not a lot of hard facts.

    Also, the agent who worked Chicago border control seems to know an aweful lot about IT and TOR that makes me wonder why he's working packaged duty.

    Starting to smell like a lot of planted evidence...

  • Perhaps some pictures, with primary colours only, might help? Narrated by Dora the Explorer maybe? Or Peppa Pig?

    Sometimes you just need a better, more educated jury rather than a dumbed down series of explanations - the Judge would probably have an issue if the prosecution spent a week explaining Tor in single syllable words and interpretive dance...

    • Or maybe have the ability to provide a "friend to the jury". Much like an opinion or statement about a case can be filed as a "amicus curae" brief (friend of the court), perhaps being able to give the jury a (hopefully neutral re: the case) expert in the field to ask questions of.

      • Any such opinions or statements would have to be signed off by both prosecution and defence before the jury sees it, as its an outside influence on the case. I can see many situations where wording alone would be an issue for either party in the case...

  • by Enry ( 630 ) <enry.wayga@net> on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:21AM (#48819659) Journal

    They help go toward intent and mood of the conversation. There's a difference between "I'll kill you" and "I'll kill you :)" as part of a conversation.

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:30AM (#48819773)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • That's sort of insulting IMHO, to refer to a technical description as "mumbo-jumbo". Also, having once had a web site titled "mumbo jumbo" that caught me some flack for the name itself, I know that the words "mumbo jumbo" are racially charged. Overall, not words that should be coming from this judge's mouth. Who cares about the jurors when this judge's manners are clearly setting a bias against the defendant as just one member of this "mumbo jumbo" society of shady "techies" that go around mucking up our si

  • by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:38AM (#48819883) Homepage Journal
    And the DA was like :-\
  • by cellocgw ( 617879 ) <cellocgw.gmail@com> on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:52AM (#48820055) Journal

    It's always seemed to me that it is critical that the judge be, if not expert, at least well-educated in areas of science, philosophy, religion, etc. which are pertinent to the case. How can a judge properly rule on admissibility of evidence (e.g. all those cases involving data sent through an open home router) or validity of objections if he doesn't comprehend the technological or cultural situation?

    • Admissibility of evidence is a question of law, not a question of fact. The judge *is* the expert in those questions for the purpose of the trial. The factual nature of evidence is not relevant to whether it is legal to present. Appeals courts are where a superior expert (judge) or a panel of experts examines where the questions of law were determined correctly.

      Questions of fact are determined by juries. In the American system at least it is the job of the opposing counsel to to question the relevant and va

      • The problem is, questions of law and questions of fact are not entirely separable. Being able to apply the law correctly often calls for an proper understanding of the facts.

      • Juries aren't supposed to bring in outside information? Yet many of them are empaneled already having a firm grasp of arithmetic and the English language and how a gun works and how Tor works etc etc.

        Juries aren't supposed to have outside information about the specific case at hand. Information about the world in general is expected, including aspects of the world relevant to the case. Otherwise all trials would start with a jury of newborns.

  • by Tokolosh ( 1256448 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @11:57AM (#48820113)

    Jury Nullification

    http://www.vocativ.com/underwo... [vocativ.com]

    • by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Thursday January 15, 2015 @12:34PM (#48820677)

      ... Jury nullification seems to be massively overstated here on Slashdot - another meme that just wont die?

      • by digsbo ( 1292334 )
        No, it's just the kind of thing you'd expect where there is a stronger showing of libertarians, who often believe (wrong or right) that they an make better decisions than the government agencies.
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          No, we're just more logical. I'm not a libertarian, per se, but I understand that jury nullification is a check on abuse of power. It has downsides (see the history of the South), but it also is an escape hatch for an draconian government. Our constitution guarantees you a trial by your peers (i.e. you are supposed to be judged by the community, not the government) and if that community finds you innocent then away you go. We swept jury nullification away because trials by "peers" weren't working so well wi

  • If the judge orders the lawyers to give inaccurate information it could lead to an injustice in either direction.

  • In the US we have no right to a jury "of our peers" as we generally think of it.

    It's one of those things that people think is in the Constitution but in reality is not [usconstitution.net].

    We have the right to a jury trial. The jury has to be impartial.. It has to be in the state that the crime was committed. And that's it.

    The only way we get a jury "of our peers" is if you consider that the American ideal says that we are all peers, regardless of gender, race, religion, education, experience, etc.

    In the case of this specifi

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