Jury in kinky sex death trial of Gregory Hudson discharged after juror Googles case
THE jury in a Queensland manslaughter trial has been dismissed reportedly after one of the jurors broke a fundamental rule.
SIX months after a Queensland juror’s Instagram posts threatened to derail the high profile murder trial of Gable Tostee, another juror has caused a manslaughter trial to be aborted in Brisbane.
The jury deliberating the kinky sex death of Gregory John Hudson was dismissed on day six of the trial, after the presiding judge learned a juror had researched the case online.
Jurors are given strict instructions at the commencement of any court trial that they are not to research the case outside the courtroom, nor are they to discuss which case they are sitting on with friend, family or their social media network.
The instructions stem from fears the jurors may be prejudiced by previously reported information that has been deemed inadmissable in court.
The discharge came in the Brisbane Supreme Court manslaughter trial of three people, including a Gold Coast sex worker, charged over the death and robbery of wealthy miner Mr Hudson in October 2014.
According to the Courier-Mail, Justice James Douglas singled out the offending juror for disobeying his instructions not to research the case online when he dismissed the jury.
He said he was alerted to the internet searches after the jury, which were well into their deliberations, submitted a question on Tuesday morning.
“Ladies and gentleman, I have resolved to discharge the panel, largely because of the question I received this morning indicating that one of your number had been making inquiries on the internet, directly contrary to my instructions to you,” the Courier-Mail reported Justice Douglas said.
“Thank you for your attention, apart from the juror who disobeyed my direction, and you are now discharged and free to go.”
It comes six months after the actions of a jury in Tostee’s trial almost caused it to be aborted just as the jury had returned its verdict.
To gasps in the courtroom as the court reconvened, Prosecutor Glenn Cash told Justice John Byrne that it had only just come to his attention that one of the 12 jurors had been talking to her Instagram followers about the trial.
Justice John Byrne rejected a defence submission to have the jury dismissed on those grounds, and, moments later, Tostee was acquitted of both the murder and manslaughter of his Tinder date, New Zealand woman Warriena Wright, who plunged to her death from his apartment balcony.
In the trial over Mr Hudson’s death, sex worker Milan Chante Walker and her friends Benjamin Samy Ghobrial and Lee Benjamin Feld have all pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.
The trio were released on Tuesday without a verdict being returned.
It’s alleged the trio detained and robbed Mr Hudson, whose body was found naked and bound in the spare room of a friend’s Varsity Lakes townhouse in October 2014.
The court heard the 57-year-old had been on a days long cocaine and sex binge leading up to his death.