Hill v. United States

FARRELL, Associate Judge:

It is a salutary and perhaps even common practice for trial judges in criminal cases, when appropriate, to instruct jurors to suppress any temptation they may have to visit the location of the alleged crime on their own. The trial judge regretted not having done so in this case, for, as it happened, a juror ventured out to the scene of the alleged drug sale the night before deliberations began to examine the lighting conditions. Appellant’s defense was mis-identification, and, as the trial judge later acknowledged, the lighting was “important, even central” to at…