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HOW DICTIONARIES THWART THE JUSTICE SYSTEM
ITEM: Florida’s Court of Appeals overturns a manslaughter conviction because one of the jurors on the case had used his iPhone to look up the definition of “prudence” during the trial.
Which sounds silly – I’d have thought that dictionaries would be welcome as a tool for applying the letter of thelaw to a given case (in this instance, whether the defendant – who claims he shot the victim because he felt threatened – acted in a “prudent” manner).
But apparently there’s a legal precedent (at least in Florida) under which dictionaries are not permitted in the jury room, and constitute “grounds for a new trial“ unless the definition of a relevant word in the dictionary is approved by the judge. The jury can’t look up stuff on its own.
So I learned something new today: the Florida legal system is at cross-purposes with the English language, and words mean only what a judge says they mean.
That’s nice.
Dear prudence,
This is dF
Which sounds silly – I’d have thought that dictionaries would be welcome as a tool for applying the letter of thelaw to a given case (in this instance, whether the defendant – who claims he shot the victim because he felt threatened – acted in a “prudent” manner).
But apparently there’s a legal precedent (at least in Florida) under which dictionaries are not permitted in the jury room, and constitute “grounds for a new trial“ unless the definition of a relevant word in the dictionary is approved by the judge. The jury can’t look up stuff on its own.
So I learned something new today: the Florida legal system is at cross-purposes with the English language, and words mean only what a judge says they mean.
That’s nice.
Dear prudence,
This is dF