New York Business Lawyers

It took an appellate court to make clear that a judge who used Google to support his intuition in a ruling was not in violation of federal procedural rules and law.   Southern District of New York Judge Denny Chin was deemed to have used the Web in a way that approximates the age old practice of window shopping to get a common sense read on the market, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in United States v. Bari, 09-1074-cr.

At issue was a putting a convicted bank robber back in the big house for robbing another bank in 2008, while on supervised release after already doing 12 years of time.  The surveillance camera caught the robber with a yellow rain hat.  And ultimately, the ex-con was found to have a yellow rain hat in his garage upon later being apprehended.

Judge Chin decided to Google yellow rain hats to conclude that one could buy yellow rain hats from a variety of places and outlets, so it was not out of the question that the ex-con could have bought such a rain hat for himself.   On appeal, the Second Circuit Appellate Court rejected the ex-con’s contention that Judge Chin had violated Rule 605 of the Federal Rules of Evidence– which states that the “judge presiding at the trial may not testify in that trial as a witness,” by using Google as described. The appellate court concluded that Chin’s use of Google merely confirmed what his innate “common sense” also told him about the availability of yellow rain hats.

Even though the appellate court also made clear that the rules of evidence are not as forceful in supervised release cases such as these, it takes a solid position that judges should be able to rely on common search engine tools to aid in their reasoning.  Anything else, in my opinion, would be simply unreasonable.  If we can take 90% of Google’s info as solid in our day to affairs ranging from shopping to weather, so should a judge.