Ex-Irwin Mitchell lawyer jailed for researching defendant while serving on jury
An ex-Irwin Mitchell solicitor has been jailed for causing the collapse of an historic child abuse trial after she admitted researching the defendant online whilst serving on the jury.
Veteran lawyer Caroline Elizabeth Mitchell was sentenced to two months in prison after pleading guilty to telling fellow jury members about research she had done online, according to the BBC.
The conviction comes after debate as to whether the complainant had shared a bedroom with their sibling became the focus of the trial.
In seeking to settle the point, the jury were given a floorplan of the property from the 1970s in which the abuse allegedly occurred.
The jury were however told that they should not speculate about the size of the room, after being told the floorplan may have changed.
Mitchell later viewed the floorplans of a neighboring house while viewing a property her partner had been interested online.
The solicitor then took a screenshot of the floorplans and showed them to a fellow juror, before being caught by a court clerk.
The revelations caused the collapse of the historic abuse trial at an estimated cost of around £30,000.
Following the collapse of the trial, the victim and defendant were then forced to wait an extra eight months for a new trial, in which they were required to give evidence a second time.
The 53-year-old lawyer now faces being struck off by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), having first qualified as a solicitor in 1995.