Order in the Court: Hand Over Your Wireless Device

There is an increasing amount of attention being drawn to cases where jurors have used wireless devices in the courtroom. In recent events, court proceedings have suffered due to accessing information that otherwise would not be permitted (or have been thought of as permissible) by the judge into the case.

As the linked article explains, just last week a juror assigned to a Florida drug trial admitted to the judge that he had been researching the case on the Internet from his handheld device. This went against the presiding judge's instructions and against what we know to be appropriate conduct in the courtroom, careful to avoid introducing bias toward either direction. If it had stopped there, the judge could have just thrown him off the case. Eventually, it was found that eight others had done the same thing and so the judge was forced to declare a mistrial.

In a similar scenario in Arkansas, a defense lawyer is asking the judge to rule a mistrial due to a juror's tweets in the courtroom. The twitter(er?) says that the verdict was already spoken before he relayed any information through Twitter.

Has our technological landscape changed so much that we need need to accommodate other realms that are affected by it? Or should it be 'business as usual' regardless of what kind of advances take place? On one side it seems appropriate to bar the uses of these kinds of devices, but the opposing argument would be that they introduce information that could turnout as key evidence in the case. Where is the line drawn?