Judge's Internet Search for Rain Hats Didn't Violate Evidence Rules, 2nd Circuit Says
A federal appeals court has ruled that a judge who searched online for information about rain hats didn’t violate the evidence rules in proceedings to revoke the supervised release of a convicted bank robber.
The New York City-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said federal evidence rules don’t apply with full force in such proceedings, and stressed that the Internet search was intended to confirm the judge’s “common sense supposition”—that there are many different kinds of rain hats for sale, Reuters reports.
“Twenty years ago, to confirm an intuition about the variety of rain hats, a trial judge may have needed to travel to a local department store to survey the rain hats on offer,” the 2nd Circuit said in the opinion (PDF). “Rather than expend that time, he likely would have relied on his common sense to take judicial notice of the fact that not all rain hats are alike. Today, however, a judge need only take a few moments to confirm his intuition by conducting a basic Internet search. …
“As the cost of confirming one’s intuition decreases, we would expect to see more judges doing just that. … We will not consider it reversible error when a judge, during the course of a revocation hearing where only a relaxed form of Rule 201 applies, states that he confirmed his intuition on a ‘matter of common knowledge.’ ”
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, who has been nominated for elevation to the 2nd Circuit, conducted the search in proceedings to revoke the release of a bank robber accused of robbing another bank, the New York Law Journal reports. Surveillance video showed the robber wearing a yellow rain hat, the same type of hat found in the garage of the suspect’s landlord.
“It is just too much of a coincidence that the bank robber would be wearing the same hat that we find in [his landlord’s] garage,” Chin wrote. To emphasize the similarities between the hats, Chin stated that “there are clearly lots of yellow hats out there,” and “one can Google yellow rain hats and find lots of different yellow rain hats.”
