I sat as a juror a couple of years ago, some teenager was accused of having brutally beaten the crap out of some girl he was living with. It went on for about 2 weeks, and the kid was facing jail if found guilty. I took it all extremely seriously. There is no way on God's green earth that I would've done Sudoku or crosswords during the trial. From a legal point of view, obviously it's enough to constitute a mis-trial. It's every defence lawyer's dream.
From a "moral/ethical" point of view, it's absolutely disgraceful. If you have ADD and can't stand to sit still and listen for a few hours in a row, then get excused on medical grounds. You're playing around with someone's life, the least you can do is at least to pretend you're listening.
In my case, some of the jurors really didn't care that much, they probably thought it would like on TV with grandiose orators and supermodel prosecution lawyers. Which is inevitable, I guess. When we came to the deliberation, some people said absolutely nothing, they just nodded their heads whenever they thought someone was watchgin them. None of this was great, but at least they had the decency to pretend they cared. There were maybe 5 of us who really paid attention during the trial, and debated the facts and the law during deliberation. The rest pretty much plodded along.
If you're intrested, we couldn't convict the kid. Both the accuser and defendant were heavy crack-users/dealers, living together. The girl's testimony didn't match the pictures of her injuries, by a long-shot. She claimed she was repeatedly punched in the face, had a couple of chairs broken over her, and was then kicked in the face until she lost consciousness. And yet, the pictures taken a couple of hours after the incident didn't look so bad. She had a bruised eye and a cut under the other eye, but that was about it. She clearly exagerated what had happened to her, which meant we had a "doubt" as to her claims, which meant we had to release the guy. Eventhough he did beat her up.
It was a weird feeling, which would've only been enhanced had I been playing Sudoku through-out.