Jurors can’t be detectives. They might listen to only one side of the story and that can’t influence their judgments - they have to listen to both sides in court and make a decision strictly on the basis of the evidence before them.
Juries are notoriously comprised of dolts and clods, especially selected by opposing attorneys. Every effort is made to exclude anyone with strong beliefs or anyone who is well educated. Community business leaders are particularly verboten.
It was a missile, I tell ya. It was a missile.
So if that "evidence" has been carefully filtered by the lawyers so as to "influence their judgement",that's OK? Too often critical evidence is suppressed by clever legal maneuvering and a system that favors criminals over victims. Jurors should be informed of ALL facts in a case.
You can bet that were I on a jury, I'd Google to see what was being concealed from me.
Is that written into the Constitution? Is a juror supposed to throw out all their own personal knowledge on a subject and just accept the testimony of experts at face value? What if the juror was a doctor or an expert in the forensic field in question? Is he then prohibited from bringing that expertise into the jury deliberations? Are jurors just supposed to be ignorant dolts? Can only an ignorant dolt make a fair decision?
The fact of the matter is that no doubt two "expert" witnesses came into the courtroom and one of them probably lied or stretched the truth. Is a juror then prohibited by the Constitution from then doing a bit of their own research to figure out which expert was a bald faced liar?
Jurors make all kinds of promises not to do this kind of stuff, but the fact is that they do. They talk about it with their family. They read the newspapers and then lie about it when asked. The jury system, like the internal revenue code, makes liars out of everyone.
Jurors must be detectives, they must be intelligent, diligent and be servants of only the “Whole Truth”. This modern judicial confection of limiting evidence and testimony and turning the Jury into nothing more than caged monkeys is a perversion of Justice.