Legal News

Want to Serve on a Jury? Be Careful What You Post

By Ashby Jones

All those soon to report to jury duty should take note: whether you end up on a trial could depend on what you’ve recently Tweeted, who you’ve “liked” on Facebook, or the pictures you recently posted to your MySpace page.

As Ana Campos and I report in Tuesday’s WSJ, social-networking sites are increasingly being used in courts to decide who is-and who isn’t-suitable to serve on a jury.

Prosecution and defense lawyers are scouring the site for personal details about members of the jury pool that could signal which side they might sympathize with during a trial.

For instance, jury consultant Amber Yearwood in San Francisco found that one potential juror in a product-liability case last year held strident opinions on a host of issues, and dispensed unsolicited medical and sex advice. “Often juries offer opinionated people like that the perfect opportunity to wield their influence,” said Yearwood. The prospective juror was bounced.

Not everyone’s crazy about the development: Some legal experts argue that the traditional jury-selection process, which involves lawyers questioning prospective jurors, provides more valuable information than out-of-context online comments.

Maybe so. But courts are upholding lawyers’ rights to research jurors online. An appellate court in New Jersey ruled last year that a lower-court judge erred by prohibiting a plaintiffs’ attorney from using the Internet in the courtroom.

Even some prosecutors are getting into the act. Armando Villalobos, the district attorney of Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas, last year equipped his prosecutors with iPads to scan the Web during jury selection.

Many people, he said, limit access to more telling details to those they have “friended.” But Villalobos is considering a method to get behind the site’s private wall to learn more. One option: granting members of the jury pool free access to the court’s wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily “friending” his office.

Some citizens in Brownsville are apprehensive about lawyers rummaging through their online lives. “It feels as if they are tapping into our personal lives,” said Lazaro Leal in an interview conducted, but of course, via Facebook.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 22, 2011 (boomark / email).