The New York Times has an article about how iPhones and Blackberries are causing problems with jury purity, triggering mistrials:

Jurors are not supposed to seek information outside of the courtroom. They are required to reach a verdict based only on the facts that the judge has decided are admissible, and they are not supposed to see evidence that has been excluded as prejudicial. But now, using their cellphones, they can look up the name of a defendant on the Web, or examine an intersection using Google Maps, violating the legal system’s complex rules of evidence.

Evidence is a complex legal issue that I know very little about, but I wonder if we’re going to have to start rethinking jury purity. We’re kidding ourselves anyway if we don’t believe that juries don’t come in with loads of internal biases, and our current jury selection process is broken in such a way to heighten those biases. This is an interesting problem.