The case selected is Capitol v. Thomas, where Jammie Thomas-Rasset of Brianerd, Minnesota, was accused of copyright infringement and illegally sharing 24 songs on the file sharing application Kazaa. Originally, the defendant, Thomas-Rasset, was found legally responsible in a 2007 trial for illegally sharing the said 24 songs and was ordered to pay $222,000 in statutory damages. The judge in Thomas-Rasset’s trial, Michael J. Davis, ordered a retrial when he “decided he had erred in giving jury instructions [for 2007 trial]” (Karnowski, 2009).
The Thomas-Rasset’s second trial was held on June 15, 2009. On the same day, the Court went through the procedure of jury selection. As Nate Anderson of Ars Technica put it, the process “appeared to confirm Minnesota's reputation as a place of Lutheran virtue and hard work. Of the 19 people called up for questioning, no one admitted to having used Napster, KaZaA, or a P2P file-sharing program—and this despite the presence of several college students and recent grads.” The final 12 jurors were “five men and seven women, all white, ranging in age from college students to retirees” (Anderson, 2009).
The retrial actually made things worse for Thomas-Rasset. The new jury found that she “willfully violated copyrights, awarding the companies $80,000 per song, or $1.92 million” (Karnowski, 2009).
As clarified in the second paragraph, in the retrial, there were no jurors who challenged for cause or preemptory challenges. This jury selection was exactly what the prosecution wanted as they were law-abiding citizens who seemed to have no sympathy for the defendant. If the defense could have it their way, they would have wanted a jury full of people who were advocates of file sharing and opponents of big record companies.
Anderson, N. (2009). Jury selected in Thomas retrial: shockingly law-abiding. Retrieved November 10, 2009, from http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/06/jury-selected-in-thomas-retrial-shockingly-law-abiding.ars
Capitol v. Thomas. (2009, September 28). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 10:23, November 10, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Capitol_v._Thomas&oldid=316727088
Karnowski, S. (2009, June 19). Jury awards $1.92m in music-sharing suit. Associated Press, p. 9. Retrieved from http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/06/19/jury_awards_192m_in_music_sharing_suit/
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