Appellate court judges do not generally assume the role of fact-finder, but a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit did what jurors are warned not to do — outside research.

A hearing in a Florida case involved a criminal suspect’s excessive force and false arrest lawsuit against a sheriff’s deputy accused of pulling the handcuffed man’s pants down and exposing his privates to onlookers. A key question is what happened just before.