Lawyers Using Facebook Research For Jury Selection 283
unassimilatible writes "Trial lawyers are increasingly using social networking sites like Facebook to research jurors in real-time during the voir dire process. Armando Villalobos, the district attorney of Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas, last year equipped his prosecutors with iPads to scan the Web during jury selection. But what of the jurors who have their privacy settings restricted to 'friends only?' Mr. Villalobos has thought of a potential workaround: granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily 'friending' his office. Faustian bargain, or another way to get out of jury duty?"
Don't know about facebook... (Score:5, Interesting)
But I do know that they're watching twitter.
I sent out a tweet, during one my last jury selection, at lunchtime, that we were in the middle of jury selection.
no specifics, just a "we're at this point in the process"
After lunch, I was called into the chambers and dismissed, because they had seen my tweet and were afraid that I might
engage in "too much" social media and release too much information.
I was surprised that showed up on court that quickly, actually. I don't know how they found it, but I assume
that they're performing near constant searches using jurors names.
No Facebook == disqualified? (Score:5, Interesting)
granting members of the jury pool free access to the court's wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily "friending" his office.
So what if I don't have a Facebook account? Will I be automatically disqualified from serving on the jury?
Isn't this illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No Facebook == disqualified? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know at least some employers are now taking the slant that if you don't have a Facebook account you automatically either "have something to hide" or "are anti-social to the extreme". I'm neither of those, but am honestly too busy to check a stupid web site 3-4x a day.
I had a facebook account but had people getting pissy with me because I wasn't checking it often enough, so now I no longer have one.
Maybe this will get me out of jury duty as well as helping me avoid pretentious asshole bosses that I wouldn't want to work for anyways some day too? One can always hope.
Re:yeah, that'll fail. (Score:5, Interesting)
That assumes they want smart jurors that can reason independently, though that was actually the case when I served on a medical malpractice trial many years ago. For another drunk driving trial, I and several other prospective jurors were eliminated by the defense because we were in jobs that required close attention to details, and it appeared they were possibly trying to argue in some fashion about blood alchohol level limits.
Re:Doesn't pass the smell test (Score:5, Interesting)
Jurors should be selected by lot, and reach their verdict by majority vote, not "consensus".
That's a terrible idea if your goal is to have the jury reach the "correct" verdict. When everyone has to agree the chances are much higher that the result will be more accurate. I was on a jury where we started out around 50%/50% after closing arguments, and it took quite a bit of discussion to get everyone to understand what was said, what the evidence was, and what our instructions were. There were several people who thought the guy was guilty because he wasn't a very likable guy, but it turns out that the combination of the evidence, the timeline presented by the prosecution, and most importantly our instructions from the judge forced a verdict of not guilty. If we had voted on it at the start, that guy would be in jail now.
Re:No Facebook == disqualified? (Score:4, Interesting)
"I know at least some employers are now taking the slant that if you don't have a Facebook account you automatically either "have something to hide" or "are anti-social to the extreme". "
and only a fool would work there. Honestly, are you about to be killed or thrown into debtors prison? I'd rather flip burgers than work for raging assholes at a company that would do that.