Potential juror who disregarded judge's order is sentenced to additional jury duty
Image from Shutterstock.
A potential juror in Florida who admitted she disregarded a judge’s order to refrain from reading about a case will have to pay for her mistake with additional jury duty.
The potential juror, Alisia Carnes, will have to show up for jury duty every other Monday until she is selected for a jury or until her six months of court-supervised probation are over, the Tampa Tribune reports. She will also have to perform 50 hours of community service.
Judge William Fuente of Hillsborough County, Florida, sentenced Carnes after she pleaded guilty to contempt for reading about the murder trial of Dontae Morris, who was later convicted and sentenced to death. Fuente had ordered potential jurors not to read about the case; Carnes told Fuente on the second day of jury selection that she violated the order by reading a story she found through Twitter.
At an Oct. 2 contempt hearing, Carnes said she violated Fuente’s order because she was overwhelmed at the thought of possibly serving on a capital jury, according to a prior Tampa Tribune story.
Carnes works at a law firm that handles mortgage foreclosures.