Students want juror released

Dr Theodora Dallas, 34, was sentenced to six months in prison by three High Court judges for disobeying the court and conducting internet research when she was a juror and then sharing it with other jury members.

The trial at Luton Crown Court in July 2011 had to be halted when Dallas told other jurors the defendant, who was on assault charges, had previously been accused of rape.

Psychology student Katie Mayhew said: “We are hoping to campaign as widely as possible for Dr Dallas’s case – encouraging as many friends, fellow students, anyone to sign the petition and speak out against this unfair sentence.”

The petition has 300 signatures, and the Facebook page entitled ‘Free Theodora Dallas - This Woman’s “Offence” Doesn’t Warrant Jail’ calls the woman’s crime an ‘horrific miscarriage of justice’ and states “I despair of the British “Justice” System.”

An email from campaigners said: “She definitely does not deserve to be in jail, especially when people who commit real crimes get no punishment...why make an example in this horrible way out of someone who made a mistake?

“Given that ‘Googling’ is not an activity likely to put society in danger, nor is Dr Dallas ever likely to be called upon again to be a juror, it beats us why someone who should be celebrating the start of an academic career has been thrown into jail under such circumstances.”

In sentencing the academic, the High Court Judge said he had “no doubt” that Dallas knew “perfectly well” the trial judge had directed jurors not to research online but “deliberately disobeyed the order”.

Greek Dallas, who moved to the UK when she was 19, said in her defence her English was not very good.

However, the Lord Judge said Dallas had struck the court as “a highly intelligent woman, extremely articulate in English”.