One Place Not To Listen To Your iPod!
07.10.07 - 05:12pm
It is a given that if you listen to your iPod during class, particularly during a test you will get busted, but one way to really get busted, as in three-year-prison-term busted is to listen to your iPod while you’re supposed to be listening to testimony
during a murder trial!
The Online Times has reported that while Judge Roger Chappel was presiding during the murder trial of Alan Wicks he thought he heard “tinny music” but dismissed it as a figment of his imagination. That is until a juror passed him a note saying that one of the jurors was listening to her MP3 player.
The juror, a Muslim woman in her early 20’s, was apparently listening to the music beneath her headscarf as the man who bludgeoned his disabled wife to death testified.
It is thought to be the first time such a happening has taken place and if proven the woman will be facing charges of contempt of court. People found guilty of contempt of court face an average of a three-year prison term.
“It follows a long pedigree of contempt cases including jurors falling asleep and, in one case, jurors who used a Ouija board before they found a defendant guilty,†said John Cooper a criminal barrister.
The juror was discharged by the judge after he received the note. She was searched outside the court by a police officer and an MP3 player was confiscated.
She was bailed on June 27th and will be facing charges of contempt on July 23rd.
The remaining 11 jurors found Wicks guilty of murder.
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