I have old Facebook and Twitter accounts, maybe some others. I’m old so there’s a MySpace account out there. But I’ve mostly been using reddit the last decade or so, and have migrated to Lemmy. Now, Lemmy is the only social media i use. Recent news got me thinking about this question.
Good answers here, but ignoring probably the most realistic and practical truth of the matter in my opinion.
You won’t immediately be sent to the stocks for saying “I don’t want to answer”, the worst case scenario is that some officer of the court informs you that you must answer the question even if you don’t want to. And even that is only going to happen if the attorney asking the question insists. And I struggle to imagine a situation where a competent attorney would do so.
Being hostile towards your prospective jurors, making them feel exposed and uncomfortable, is not a way to march to victory in a trial. They want to ensure you aren’t prejudiced against their client/case. Making you dislike them personally IS prejudice. Causing prejudice is a bad way to eliminate prejudice.
They will ask questions, mostly yes/no ones, that you need to answer honestly. They may ask for clarification. If you don’t want to answer and say so, it’s unlikely anyone will press you because that unnwillingness to answer is just as clear an indication of who you are as anything else.
Causing prejudice is a bad way to prevent predjudice
I laughed and now people are staring at me.
This is really helpful, thanks.
This seems correct. A judge (generally, without looking into all local rules) could technically rule that you are compelled to answer, and then continuing to refuse could lead to a contempt of court charge.
But the whole point of the process is to find a suitable juror, so if interacting with a potential juror is like pulling teeth in voir dire, the most practical solution seems to be dismissal by the judge so everyone can move along.
What exactly is the legal definition of “social media” anyway?
Personally I don’t consider lemmy or reddit to be social media, they’re more like several forums in a trench-coat.
I’d say they are because I think I’m getting addicted to Lemmy. It’s a habitual task in my free time now.
Going by that logic benzodiazepines are social media
I was kinda making a light hearted joke but if you want to go by the formal definition, Lemmy is still considered social media
Social media:
Interactive forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the Internet.
Lemmy 100% replaced reddit for me . Glad I found something where if it starts getting shitty, I can move to a new instance and stay on the same service.
I hope switching instances is more streamlined in the future.
They are by definition social media…
Nobody was being asked for their social media credentials, it’s not like you have to give them full access. What happened was that the attorneys looked the jurors up and went through their old posts, all stuff that was publicly available. One of the jurors they dismissed posted a picture of people celebrating Biden’s election win, and that was enough to show that they were biased.
and that was enough to show that they were biased.
no, it was enough to show that they MAY be biased. The juror in question thought the event was in celebration of caregivers.
not sure if you’re deliberately distorting the truth or just uninformed but either way… classy.
Absolutely not. If asked, just refuse to answer, don’t lie. But, I’ve been summoned a few times and they’ve never asked about that, so far.
Can’t you just politely decline and then they relieve you from duty? Or can they coerce you into doing a digital striptease for them?
I just want to add, that this is completely hypothetical. I was just fantasizing about slipping onto Trump’s jury.
There are much easier ways to get a lifetime of death threats.
But, would it be worth it?
Yea, I’d still volunteer. Honestly, serving on a jury judging Trump you’d be contributing to the preservation of democracy in a more significant way than pretty much anyone else.
So uh… for managed democracy and super earth!
Those feelings are the sort of thing that would get you disqualified from the jury.
Oh, definitely… but I’m ineligible anyways.
I’d be right there with you. ✊
First, wow. Rent free and all that.
Second, I don’t want to be on anyone’s jury. And if I were selected for a jury, the government is going to have to work damn hard to get me to convict anyone.
I’ve been rejected from a jury pool before. Poor choice by the legal defender because of their own presumptions about me.
I feel like saying “I do not believe in convicting anyone” is a good way to not be on a jury. Otherwise, I hear you can just mention the magic words “jury nullification” and get kicked out at roughly Lightspeed.
“I’m a prison abolitionist” or “I support the prisoners union” work wonders as well. If you go far enough left it’s harder to stay on a jury than get kicked off
No.
Tired of the constant erosion of civil liberties. This ain’t civilization
Hellll no
The court has more important things to do than inquire about your internet history, and you’d have to be a moron to bring up the subject.
Why would they ask about social media at all?
Somehow I feel like you haven’t read the news in the last 72 hours…
Man it must be nice to live in wherever bubble @morphballganon is in.
I don’t know either. I don’t do any TV news. There must more important things going on than jury selection in loser Trump’s case. That said, what happened with this social media jury thing?
Well_
It’s the first criminal prosecution of a US President, ever.
Like it’s never happened before. So from a history, unique event perspective there is that.
But also, yeah it’s like totally non news for one person to be in the jury selection process for a trial.
The news is that Court room reporters via Fox were basically doing jurors.
All good points.
Oh, doxing. Yeah. The conservative media machine doesn’t sleep on one inch. They have unlimited money, labor, tech, and time. Their goal is to make public service work contentious and adversarial, and stop government from working, especially on things like registrars of voters, boards of education, and of course jury service.
Of course that was going to be an issue in this case. Need to start treating interference with government service as a serious crime.
Because it’s in everyone’s best interest that people with overt bias are dismissed. In high profile cases it’s standard practice for both sides to do pretty intensive research on individual prospective jurors (they get a list), and that often includes scouring the web for their social media accounts. If they find something you posted, and you didn’t disclose your account when asked, you could be in trouble.
I don’t think it’s usually standard to ask specifically about social media accounts, at least in normal mundane cases, but in a crazy case like this, it can say a lot about a person’s ability to be impartial.
Why would they ask about social media at all?
I was just about to ask this same question in a different thread. I’m in a similar situation, in that Lemmy is the only social media I use (Reddit before the API crap), but I’ve never used my real name. I’d happily own all my comments, but the point of an anonymous account is that I don’t have to. I guess when you’re under oath it doesn’t matter, you have to truthfully answer the question that’s asked.
Answering the question in chronological order, during the voir dire portion of the jury selection process, jury candidates would be asked a battery of questions by the parties to the case, plus by the judge, to determine if the candidates can be sufficiently impartial as jurors. Some qualities are – legally speaking – so inherently prejudicial that a juror could not sit on the jury, such as being a active judge in a different court. Other qualities are potentially prejudicial, such as if a candidate is a police officer and the case is about police brutality.
For a case where social media evidence will play a large part, the parties may not want a juror that is keenly familiar with memes and the latest online trends. The lawyers would be permitted to ask about social media use, and could remove the candidate if their answer indicates some articulable bias that isn’t an illegal category (eg sex, race). Alternatively, they can remove a candidate peremptorily, without describing their reasoning, but the number of these removals is limited.
Since the question supposes that the jury has already been selected, it may have been that the case didn’t involve social media or the lawyers and judge didn’t ask about it. However, jurors are always asked if they have any reason they cannot be impartial, so jurors would have to speak up if they have any doubts at all, vis-a-vis their anonymous social media accounts.
Still, after the selection process, when the jury is impaneled, they will be asked to avoid seeking out relevant news articles or discussing the case with anyone outside the jury room. This is not as rigorous as sequestration, but this would include avoiding posting on social media about the case. Jurors are usually free to carry on with the rest of their lives, with that in mind.
Thus, to answer the question, an anonymous social media account doesn’t need to be “given up”, unless it would affect the case somehow. But having such an account is potentially disclosable during the jury selection process. Ideally, the inquiring attorney would simply ask about the nature of the anonymous account, rather than forcing them to out their account.
can you refuse to answer the question. feels like this is about your personal life. is that required. im fine if they kick me off but I would be mad if I was given contempt for not answering.
I genuinely don’t know what happens then. At least in California, the questions for the prospective jurors are required to be germane to the case at hand, with final discretion in the hands of the trial judge. But supposing that one of the attorneys does pose a fairly invasive question and the judge doesn’t block it, I would guess that contempt of court becomes possible. The California Rules of Court only suggest that a “sequestered voir dire” be “considered” but again, there’s significant discretion to the trial judge. So typically, voir dire will be out and open to all the other jurors, the attorney, and anyone in the gallery.
Of course, any seasoned judge should be aware that some jurors simply don’t want to serve or participate, and while they can’t officially endorse that reality, a sincere explanation from the jury candidate that they don’t want to answer the question often ends with the judge simply excusing the candidate and they just go home, having fulfilled their civil obligation.
The judge would have to be extremely annoyed by something else to consider contempt charges against sincere members of the public. This is the reverse from perjury, where lying to the court is not taken kindly at all.
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The problem is that while on its face the question seems reasonable it quickly becomes more and more absurd the longer you consider it.
ANY online account could be considered social media these days by the prevailing overly broad definitions used. Email? Amazon? ISP subscriber? Newspaper subscription? Cloud storage? Image hosting? Online diary? Tech support forum? Teams account through work? Almost universally they all either include social media components or could be defined as such by the overly broad definitions common today. The question has about as much meaning as asking if the juror has ever used the Internet at all.
on its face the question seems reasonable it quickly becomes more and more absurd the longer you consider it.
What is “the question”?
Because I doubt the questions in a voir dire would simply be “have you ever used social media?” but would a series of questions responding to the answers, all tailored to finding out if the juror is interacting with material that is prejudical.
Don’t give anything. It can disqualify you, but this is no different than asking your grandma for her diary before they let her sit a jury.
Thanks for the participation everyone!
My conclusion is that the question is moot. You most likely won’t be asked to give up your entire social media activity. But you can be asked about the content if it’s relevant to the case.
Perjury is serious beyond the penalties, and i solemnly swear that i had no intentions of doing so.
need more explanation?
