Re: A friend of mine was doing Jury Service recently
The big problem however is that very often the "more evidence" that you find out is a load of bollocks.
Entirely true. Which is one reason why I didn't do it. The others being you're breaking the law, plus fucking up the entire process.
Well after one case was over I did have a look online. Turned out there was almost no information anyway. Couldn't even find out what sentence the crims in question had got - as local papers haven't done court reporting since about the 90s.
I do not have a problem with jurors looking up a few objective facts
Even this can be dangerous. Obviously there's no problem checking distances, though if that's relevant you should have been given the info. Also you're allowed to send a note to the judge to ask for any info like that which you feel you need.
But you don't want jurors looking up medical info for example. If it's needed, that's what expert witnesses are supposed to be for. Admittedly there have been cases where this has gone wrong, and the witness isn't as objective as they're supposed to be. In the US I understand it's common practise for both defence and prosecution to have their own, in the UK they're supposed to work for the court, and it's very unusual for both sides not to accept them as a neutral source and get their own.
Hence you're told as a blanket instruction not to search. You've got a mechanism to ask for more info, and that is probably important so the judge (and any appeals process) knows what info you got. If the prosecution don't give you enough info, your job isn't to look it up, it's to ask for more. If you're still not happy, it's to find "not guilty".
Appeals aren't normally supposed to overturn the finding of juries - but they need to know what info the jury had, so they can rule on whether that was enough, or even too much.