I wasn’t planning on writing another blog post about jury duty, but what can you do when you hear about lawyers coming up with new and creative uses for social media?
Here’s the latest: In Texas, the District Attorney’s Office for Cameron County has authorized its staff to begin using the Facebook profiles and postings of prospective jurors as part of the jury selection process, and has equipped them with iPads for this purpose.
Previously, when you were called to jury duty, you filled out a (paper) form, providing your name and address and some basic information about your employer, marital status, etc., and brought it with you and submitted it when you showed up at the courthouse. If you were called for consideration to serve on a trial, the lawyers for the prosecution and defense would then question you to determine whether you were qualified to sit on the jury for that trial. The information you provided on your form and in your answers to the questions were the only information the prosecution and defense had to go on to determine whether to accept you as a juror for a particular trial.
Now, with more courtrooms wired for wi-fi, it’s possible for lawyers to make use of wireless devices to access the Facebook profiles and postings of prospective jurors, even as those jurors sit in front of them in the courtroom. Think about it: If those prospective jurors are out on Facebook or other social networking sites, the lawyers now have ready access to all the information that those people have elected to share – including employment history, education, religion, activities and interests, favorite arts and entertainment, and potentially sexual orientation, if the person has chosen to disclose this in their public profile. And the lawyers can also run a quick Google search on a potential juror, turning up other interesting tidbits that are part of the public record. All of which makes far more information available for consideration by both the prosecution and the defense.
Interviewed for the Brownsville Herald, Cameron County District Attorney Armando R. Villalobos says, “People tend to post more freely on Facebook than they might face to face. As a DA, I would be all for it because the more information I have, the better off we are going to be in getting a fair jury and getting the convictions and acquittals the system needs to function.” He adds that while some jurors may see it as an invasion of their privacy, they shouldn’t be concerned, because “once prosecutors are done with the information procured from Facebook, it will be disposed of.”
I don’t know about you, but it strikes me as all the more reason to revisit your Facebook privacy settings. Do you really want “Everyone” to be able to see all your likes, activities, and other connections? Yes, making them accessible to the public “lets you express your interests and experiences, and connect with people who like the same things you do” – but if you get called for jury duty, you just might want to think about locking them down.
A further problem, as suggested by a blogger for Law.com, is that people who want to get out of jury duty could selectively modify their profiles so that they won’t be selected. I wouldn’t recommend this tactic, though. After all, if you’re a member of the jury pool for a particular trial, both sides will be feverishly consulting social media for anything they can come up with on you. A profile that gets you rejected by the prosecution may very well get you accepted by the defense – and vice versa.
But most people I know are already quite vigilant about their privacy settings; after all, there have been enough scary stories about misuse and/or abuse of profile information to get us to take the time to customize our settings.
Still, social media provide lawyers just one more tool they can use to profile prospective jurors. And if the information is out there, hey – they can use it.