What a verdict does to attention: 32 jury trials on Wikipedia, 2021 to 2026

When a jury comes back, people go looking. One public place to see how many is Wikipedia, which publishes daily reading counts for every article (Wikimedia).

We took 32 widely reported jury verdicts in the US, UK and Australia since January 2021, from Derek Chauvin to Matthew Farwell, and compared reading of each case’s article in the verdict week with its usual level, set months before the trial.

In the typical case, the verdict week ran at 26.4× the usual daily reading. Half the cases fell between 10.6× and 77×. A month later the typical case was back to 1.7×.

English Wikipedia, readers only (not automated traffic), counted on 13 Nov 2026. The Farwell verdict of 10 Nov 2026 is shown but left out of the typical figures until a full week is in.

What the numbers show

Almost every verdict moved the needle. In 24 of the 31 complete cases the verdict week ran at least ten times the usual level, and in 11 at least fifty times. The largest jumps were Lucy Letby (591.5×, 230,401 a day against 390), Daniel Penny (335.4×) and Kyle Rittenhouse (215.2×).

Famous names move least, in proportion. Where the article already drew 1,000 or more readers a day, the typical jump was 21×; under 1,000, it was 62.1×. Sean Combs (2.8×) and Sunny Balwani (2.5×) were at the bottom. A page with a big everyday audience has less room to multiply.

The peak usually lands the next day. Of the 28 complete American cases, 21 peaked on the day after the verdict date. Wikimedia counts in universal time, five hours ahead of New York, so a verdict read out in an American afternoon, and the evening’s reading after it, fall largely into the next day. Counting the verdict day and the six days after it keeps both in.

Most of it goes. A month on (days 30 to 60 after the verdict) the typical case read at 1.7× its usual level. 13 of 31 were still at double or more; 8 had dropped below their usual level.

The table

Every verdict, earliest first. The first 25 show; the button under the table opens the rest. Search it, and on a wider screen sort by any column. “Usual a day” and “verdict week a day” are Wikipedia reads; the jump is one divided by the other.

Download the data (CSV)

32 rows: the court, the verdict, its date and the report it comes from, the Wikipedia article, and every figure in the table, with flags.

The edition’s 14 times

Our 13 November edition said reading of the Sandra Birchmore article ran at 14 times its usual level in the week of the Farwell verdict (IP Surveillance). That figure still stands, on the edition’s own definition: the mean of 5 to 11 November (19,766 reads in seven days, 2,824 a day) against the median of 2 July to 30 September (201 a day), on the one article title the edition measured. That gives 14×. (The edition called its window the 90 days to 30 September; 2 July to 30 September is 91. Over 90 days the median is 204.5 and the multiple 13.8×, which also rounds to 14.)

This page measures it differently, the same way as every other case here. Its week starts on the verdict day, 10 November, rather than five days before it; its usual level comes from April to July, before the trial; and it adds the article’s other titles, which matters here because the article was renamed “Murder of Sandra Birchmore” on 11 November. On those terms the Farwell row reads 37.2× on the 3 days published so far (5,749 a day against 154), and is marked provisional. On the edition’s window with the other titles added, it would be 13×. The two figures answer different questions: how the verdict week compared with the summer, and how it compared with a fixed point before the trial.

Method and limits

The sample. Jury verdicts on guilt or liability in the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia or New Zealand from 1 January 2021 to 10 November 2026, in cases national news covered. Each verdict date in the table links to a news report or a court or prosecutor’s statement that gives it. Where verdicts could not be reported at once, as in Lucy Letby’s case in England, the date is the day they became public. We left out guilty pleas, mistrials, judge-only verdicts, sentencing verdicts and heads of state or government. The list is a sample of well-known trials, chosen because they were widely reported, not every jury verdict; ordinary trials would almost certainly show smaller numbers.

The article. For each case we used the page a reader searching the defendant’s name reached on verdict day: their own article, or the article their name redirected to. If the name led nowhere, we used the article on the case. Wikipedia counts a reader who arrives through a redirect under the redirect’s name (Wikipedia), so we added up the article and every title that points to it now, plus the defendant’s name where it pointed there on verdict day. Each article counts once, at its earliest verdict.

The usual level, one window for every case. The median daily reading over days 209 to 120 before the verdict: 90 days that end four months out, so that for most cases the trial coverage comes after it. Where jury selection began before that window ended, the row is flagged “trial in baseline”. Its usual level is already raised and its jump understated. The verdict week is the mean of the verdict day and the six days after. A month later is the median of days 30 to 60. The typical figure is the median across complete cases; a median, so one huge case such as Letby’s does not drag it.

Left out after checking. Six verdicts from the starting list are not in the table:

• Alex Jones (Texas damages). Liability was set by the judge by default; the jury decided damages only.
• Alex Murdaugh. His name led on verdict day to an article on his trial created on 25 Jan 2023, five weeks before the verdict, so there is no usual level.
• James Crumbley (Oxford school shooting). Shares the Oxford High School shooting article, counted at Jennifer Crumbley’s earlier verdict.
• Chad Daybell. Shares the Vallow-Daybell murders article, counted at Lori Vallow Daybell’s earlier verdict.
• Harvey Weinstein (New York retrial, 2025). Same article as the Los Angeles verdict of December 2022, which counts.
• Simon Levy (Old Bailey). The article on the case was created on 12 Aug 2026, after the verdict.

The source. Daily per-article counts from the Wikimedia pageviews API, English Wikipedia, all access, “user” agent (which removes automated traffic it can identify), in UTC days (Wikimedia). Counted on 13 Nov 2026.

Attention is not demand. A reading count says people looked something up. It does not say they would buy a book, watch a series or pay for anything, and it says nothing about whether the attention was sympathetic.

Corrections to bradley@projectbrazen.com. Last updated 13 November 2026.

Where this started

The Farwell figure ran in the 13 November edition of IP Surveillance, and the question behind it, how much attention a verdict really brings and for how long, is what this page answers. It is our second free data page, after copyright termination notices. IP Surveillance goes out every Friday with stories worth developing and the reporting behind them.