Social media audits of prospective jurors are now (or at least should be) the standard before voir dire. But too often, once the trial team has learned of jurors' “likes” for Mitt Romney or the Kardashians or chemtrails and jury selection is over, their social media profiles are ignored.
From our perspective, monitoring of jurors’ public social networking should continue through trial and through deliberations. The potential for misconduct is too high to ignore, since many jurors active on social networking may be unimpressed by the flood of admonitions judges provide at the start of trial and before every break.
From our perspective, monitoring of jurors’ public social networking should continue through trial and through deliberations. The potential for misconduct is too high to ignore, since many jurors active on social networking may be unimpressed by the flood of admonitions judges provide at the start of trial and before every break.
Judges around the country have been forced in growing numbers to confront willfully disobedient jurors who post on Twitter, Facebook or their personal blogs about ongoing trials. By 2010, according to Reuters Legal, juror social media postings have called into question at least 90 verdicts and prompted nearly 30 new trials. We’re sure those numbers have jumped since then.
When monitoring a trial, we check jurors’ social media postings on a daily basis. Most of the time we find nothing – really, most jurors do follow instructions. But there are a significant few who do not, including the young man from Florida we found posting key trial details, and his take on the presentation of evidence, on his Facebook wall. The posts were overall rather innocuous, but it was clear he was ignoring the judge’s admonitions. And if he had no qualms about ignoring one key instruction, we were concerned he might flagrantly disregard others throughout trial and deliberations.
We notified our clients, who told the judge, and the juror was off the case.
Monitoring seated jurors’ social media is a time commitment that’s easy to push down the priority list during the hectic days of trial. But staying abreast of your panel’s continued Internet usage really needs to be just as standard as the initial searches. Even making sure to ask for their Twitter names during voir dire (or asking the judge to do so to avoid looking stalker-ish) can be a strong deterrent to their disregard of Internet use admonitions. For more advice on monitoring jurors’ Internet presence during trial, contact Senior Vice President Claire Luna at 714.754.1010 or cluna@juryimpact.net.
When monitoring a trial, we check jurors’ social media postings on a daily basis. Most of the time we find nothing – really, most jurors do follow instructions. But there are a significant few who do not, including the young man from Florida we found posting key trial details, and his take on the presentation of evidence, on his Facebook wall. The posts were overall rather innocuous, but it was clear he was ignoring the judge’s admonitions. And if he had no qualms about ignoring one key instruction, we were concerned he might flagrantly disregard others throughout trial and deliberations.
We notified our clients, who told the judge, and the juror was off the case.
Monitoring seated jurors’ social media is a time commitment that’s easy to push down the priority list during the hectic days of trial. But staying abreast of your panel’s continued Internet usage really needs to be just as standard as the initial searches. Even making sure to ask for their Twitter names during voir dire (or asking the judge to do so to avoid looking stalker-ish) can be a strong deterrent to their disregard of Internet use admonitions. For more advice on monitoring jurors’ Internet presence during trial, contact Senior Vice President Claire Luna at 714.754.1010 or cluna@juryimpact.net.
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