SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT DIRK GKEINEDER - Mass Cases

773.
B. Summary of Applicable Law.
The requirement that a jury's verdict be based
solely upon evidence presented in the courtroom is
guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments and
Article XII. The exposure of a deliberating jury to
specific information about the case which was not
introduced into evidence in the courtroom undermines the
fairness of a criminal trial. See Commnnwealth v. Cuffie,
414 Mass. 632, 638 (1993 . Since Commonwealth v. Fidler,
377 Mass. 192 (1979), it has been settled that the
exposure of a deliberat ng jury to "extraneous matter"
entitles a defendant to a new trial unless the
Commonwealth proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the
defendant was not prejudiced thereby.
1. Jury experiment as extraneous information.
An experiment conducted by the deliberating jury may
improperly expose the jury to extraneous information.
See Annotatipn, Protsrietv of Juror's Tests or Experiments
in Jurv Room, 31 A.L.R. 4th 566, 593-597(1984) (collecting
cases). This Court has equated experiments conducted in
the jury room with receipt of outside information under
the Fidler/CuffiP standard. See, e.q., Commonwealth v.
Beauchame, 424 Mass. 682, 691 (1997). In one leading
civil case, the Court a€firmed a grant of a new trial
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