See, I told you so!
Not quite a year ago in this space I wrote about the dangers of Tweeting or blogging while impaneled as a juror on a case before the courts (see “FYI: Jury Duty is NOT a Good Place to Go Social,” January 10, 2011). Well, last week, the Arkansas Supreme Court threw out the 2010 murder conviction of a death row inmate because one of the jurors had been Tweeting during proceedings.
In remanding the death-sentence conviction of the defendant for a new trial, the Court specified the actions of the Tweeting juror, identified as “Juror #2,” as well as reports that another juror had fallen asleep during testimony, as misconduct that “calls into question the fairness of his trial.”
The juror in question reportedly Tweeted repeatedly, even after being warned to stop. Some Tweets were relatively innocuous (“The coffee here sucks,” or “Court. Day 5. here we go again”). Attorneys for the defense called the juror’s behavior to the judge’s attention. The judge then spoke to the juror, but since the Tweets mentioned no case-related specifics, the judge declined to release the juror.
But, as reported in the New York Times, then there was this philosophical, and more suggestive, Tweet: “Choices to be made. Hearts to be broken…We each define the great line.” And then, shortly before the jury announced its verdict, the juror Tweeted: “It’s over.”
Defense attorneys sprang into action, characterizing it as a “flagrant violation of the Circuit Court’s instruction against twittering,” pointing out that one of the juror’s Twitter followers was a reporter.
Still, the lower court judge dismissed the defense motion for a mistrial. Upon review, however, the State Supreme Court said that use of Twitter constituted inappropriate public discussion of a trial while in session. As reported in SocialMediaEsq.com, the court’s conclusion was as follows: “Because of the very nature of Twitter as an on online social media site, a juror’s Tweets about the trial were very much public discussions. Even if such discussions were one-sided, it is in no way appropriate for a juror to state musings, thoughts, or other information about a case in such a public fashion.”
The case clearly sets the rights of social media users against the rights of defendants in criminal or civil cases. As I pointed out previously, a number of State Supreme Courts are waking up to the potential dangers of jurors who Tweet or blog while impaneled on a case before the courts and are now proposing amendments to their respective Rules of Civil Procedure.
This case also suggests that some jurors (representative, perhaps, of those younger demographics we hear so much about with respect to Twitter and Facebook usage?) have a difficult time understanding how their social media usage could affect the integrity of the judicial process. You have to wonder whether amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure will be enough to address the issue of potential juror misconduct; not to go all Big Brother on you, but I can envision some form of online “sequestration,” limiting jurors’ access to mobile devices (or at least to their social applications) for the duration of jury service, as a direction the courts might potentially take.