Appeals Court OKs Judges' Use Of Google

Jurors are causing mistrials by conducting their own Web research, but it's apparently OK for judges to base their rulings on material they find online.

In a ruling issued today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals said that judges can use search engines to help them render decisions. "With so much information at our fingertips (almost literally), we all likely confirm hunches with a brief visit to our favorite search engine that in the not-so-distant past would have gone unconfirmed," the court wrote in the case. The ruling stemmed from a proceeding against Anthony Bari, who was released from prison in May of 2008 after spending 13 years incarcerated for bank robbery. In September of 2008, Bari became a suspect in a new bank robbery. Rather than bring a new criminal case against him, the government sought to revoke his release on the theory that he had committed a new bank robbery. The strongest evidence against him was that the perpetrator of the September robbery was videotaped wearing a yellow rain hat similar to one found in the garage of Bari's landlord. At his release revocation hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Denny Chin said that it was "just too much of a coincidence" that the bank robber would wear what appeared to be the same type of hat that was found in Bari's landlord's garage. To support his point that the similarity wasn't coincidental, Chin said his chambers conducted a Google search for yellow rain hats and found many different types.