The Lasting Effects Jurors Experience from Serving on High Profile Cases

     The civic duty of serving on a jury should not extend to defending the verdict months and years into the future. After serving as a juror on a high profile case, jurors experience extensive public backlash for their decision and are often scrutinized in their local communities. High profile cases can include cases involving celebrities, such as O.J. Simpson or cases involving events that have been made newsworthy through the media, such as in the case of Casey Anthony.

    Often times, jurors are hard to find for high profile cases because the attorneys struggle to compose a group of twelve that will not be completely overcome by the breathless media coverage. However, jurors are not always informed of the lasting effects of serving on a high profile case. 
In 2011, Casey Anthony was on trial for the murder of her two year old daughter. For this trial, there were significant difficulties in composing a jury of twelve due to the intense local media coverage. The presiding judge made the decision to import a jury to Orlando, Florida from Clearwater, Florida, which is over 100 miles away. He did this in the hopes of  jurors there might be less exposed to the intricacies of the case.

    Little did they know, the jurors would be ridiculed for their non-guilty verdict for months to come. Even though these jurors were not citizens of the city where the case was tried, this group of twelve was ridiculed for the non-guilty verdict in Orlando as well as back home in Clearwater. In Orlando, immediately following the verdict, the courthouse was bombarded with signage saying “Juror 1–12 Guilty of Murder!!!” and “Somewhere a Village is Missing 12 Idiots.” Once back in Clearwater, one juror reportedly quit her job and fled the state to avoid the animosity she was receiving. The media even went so far in this case as to push for the release of the juror's information and intervene in the public distaste for these twelve individuals. Seeing that the Casey Anthony trial led to such life changing circumstances for the jurors, two years later when the George Zimmerman trial was held in Florida the attorneys agreed to handle juror information differently from the beginning. Prior to jury selection in the Zimmerman case, Judge Debra Nelson granted the defense’s request that jurors’ identities be kept anonymous throughout the trial. Those jurors also received death threats and threads were thriving on twitter asking for the death of the juror's children because they let George Zimmerman walk free. 

    However, this problem is not new and its effects can last much longer than anyone can truly anticipate due to the ever evolving media platforms. Specifically, the jurors that served on the 1995 O.J. Simpson criminal trial are still dealing with the wrath of the media over the non-guilty verdict that they provided over two decades ago. In July of 2017, one juror was interviewed by ABC News and was asked to describe what he thinks of O.J. Simpson now compared to how he viewed him and the events in 1995 at the time of trial.  It should not be breaking news that this juror may have additional thoughts on the situation decades later. Likewise, one juror in an exclusive ET interview acknowledged that due to the stress of the trial, he took disability leave from work and after four to six months of therapy was finally able to return to his normal job. 

    In conclusion, jurors should be warned of the potential long term effects that can result from taking on such an outward-facing case. Then after trial, the least that can be done to show appreciation for the sacrifices of serving on a high profile trial is to let the jurors be.