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Twitter, Facebook & Internet Lead to Mistrials

By Gerry Oginski

Well it finally happened. A lengthy federal criminal trial in Florida resulted in a mistrial after a juror admitted to doing Internet research, despite the judge's instructions not to.

Eight weeks worth of trial were wasted because of one juror's failure to follow the court's instructions. There's a shocker.

John Schwartz, a writer for the New York Times, also noted that an Arkansas court is being asked to overturn a $12.6 million judgment claiming that a juror used twitter to send updates during the civil trial.

Also, in Pennsylvania, defense lawyers in a federal corruption trial requested a mistrial because a juror posted updates in the case both on Twitter and Facebook.

In today's day and age of social networking sites and the ability of people to communicate via iPhone, Blackberry, and text messages, it has never been easier for jurors to do their own independent research about the issues involved in a trial. Not only that, but today's communication devices allow anyone to immediately do a Google search on anyone involved in the trial including the lawyers and the judge.

Pretrial instructions by the trial judge in New York routinely advise potential jurors that they are not do any independent research outside of the court. The reason is simple: we don't want jurors basing their decisions on any outside influences that have not been subject to the scrutiny of the court and the attorneys.

When jurors obtain information outside of the courtroom, the attorneys and the judge no longer have an ability to know what information the juror has obtained and how it could possibly influence them when reaching a decision.

In civil cases in New York, where jurors are never sequestered, no one really ever knows whether jurors talk to friends or family members or do their own research. It's only when someone has observed them investigating on their own can this breach of a juror's duty come to light.

Just last week I posted an informative and educational video about this exact topic. The title? "Twitter and Facebook jury instructions in New York." in the video I posed the question: "Should judges be required to give jurors warnings that they are not to use twitter, Facebook, my space and other social networking sites to blog about the case?" Watch the video to find out the answer.

Interestingly, in the cases discussed in the New York Times article, jurors were warned not to do online research. Despite these explicit warnings jurors disregarded them to investigate on their own.

Ah, what's a Twitterer supposed to do while serving jury duty?

Full post as published by New York Medical Malpractice Blog on March 18, 2009 (boomark / email).