The Twelve review: How do you keep jurors off their smartphones? Lock them all ... trends now
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The Twelve
Take away the smartphone of anyone under 40 and you might as well cut off their oxygen supply. Most can't get through a meal or even walk from front door to bus stop without constantly scrolling.
So how can any jury now be trusted to try a murder case that might run for months without Googling the defendant?
The jurors on The Twelve (ITV1), an Australian drama starring Sam Neill as a charismatic defence lawyer, are already thumbing through social media before the trial begins.
All of them are well aware that it's forbidden. The foreman, Corrie (Pallavi Sharda), spells it out: 'We can't make any inquiries outside the courtroom, which means we can't Google anything or read any media coverage on the case.'
The Twelve is an Australian drama starring Sam Neill (pictured) as a charismatic defence lawyer
'How do they police that?' shrugs one juror. That evening, several of them are obsessively searching social media and news footage, trying to do their own detective work on the defendant - Kate Lawson (Kate Mulvany), a woman accused of murdering her own 14-year-old niece and hiding the body, in a killing with dark sexual undercurrents.
This drama, first shown Down Under in 2022 (and based on a Belgian original), highlights a real problem. Thanks to our phones, millions of people are
