Adelaide juror who took photos of alleged child crime scene forces retrial

[Mighty AU]

An Adelaide juror on a child sex abuse case has caused a mistrial, meaning a teenage girl will have to give evidence a second time, after he took his own photographs of the alleged crime scene.

The Court of Criminal Appeal has quashed the convictions of a man aged in his 40s because of the juror's photographs, and ordered a retrial after finding there had been a miscarriage of justice.

A District Court jury had found the man guilty of one count of communicating with the intention of making a child amenable to sexual activity and three counts of indecent assault against a child.

Chief Justice Chris Kourakis stated trial judge Peter Brebner was informed that a juror had photographed the scene of the alleged sex assault before showing three fellow jurors.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-26/sa-juror-who-took-photos-causes-retrial/11150600

[Mercantoria]

so this poor young girl is going to be forved to go through all this again because some dumbass on the jury couldn't follow the most basic of instructions.

[Tinter]

I'm a little confused and the article doesn't say much. A juror took a picture of the crime scene and showed it to other jurors, and that meant it is a mistrial? I don't get why.

[Mighty AU]

Jurors are only supposed to be influenced by evidence presented to them in the court room.

[NoPartyHats]

It's been said already but Jurors are not detectives, they're unbiased council that are supposed to make decisions based on the efforts of the prosecution and defense. Anything beyond that taints the nature of the trial

[SleepyAl]

...If this is for a sexual assault trial of a child, and that juror took pictures of the crime scene, does that mean he just took child pornography?

Maybe the juror needs to be back in court in the defendant's chair.

[Slendermang]

How did you get that from 'crime scene'?

[SleepyAl]

Yeah, I should have read that article better. Still, a photo of a crime in action is technically a photo of the crime scene too! /s

Still, not sure what impetus someone would have to take a picture of the crime scene itself. Was that picture taken before the crime? Or did the juror go out and take a picture of the area during the trial? I'm just wondering why the juror would do that. The article doesn't really make that clear.