If anyone wants to see a jury charge / deliberation / announcement of finding / sentencing, etc. in action, see
this story on the trial of the man accused of killing Ottawa police officer Eric Czapnik.
It was over very quickly, about 9 hours. If you read through the tweets in the Twitter box halfway down the page (pages 16-20), there's some interesting info:
- Very specific guidance from the judge, such as "If you believe X, then you have no choice but to find Y."
- Leaks about the jury once they were in deliberation (they had pizza for supper!)
- Then a flurry of activity as word got out that they made a finding.
Note how fast it happened once the verdict came - at 8:57pm the jury entered the room and sat down; by 9:03 they'd given their verdict and were hearing victim impact statements.
At 9:36 the judges gives the guilty man the opportunity to speak before he's sentenced. At 9:37 he's sentenced and taken away in leg irons.
All that to say, it sounds like, once there's word of a verdict, it could be over very quickly.
I think if you want to be guaranteed of seeing the results as they happen, you'd have to follow one of the major reporters on Twitter. I watch Twitter feeds on websites and don't actually subscribe, but I think once you 'follow' someone, you can choose to get e-mail alerts when they post. Then you sleep with your smartphone
.
Can any Twitter pros confirm?