If you're selected for jury duty (US), should you give up your anonymous social media accounts?
If you're selected for jury duty (US), should you give up your anonymous social media accounts?
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.
Yeah, that term has gotten overly broad. I like to separate it into two groups. Personal social media, where you use your real name and stuff, and (for lack of a better term) anonymous social media, where you just use some screen name. If anything you post a comment in is social media most news sites are social media. The term needs to be reigned in and I think should only apply to the personal variety.
I can't wait to give them my Nintendo credentials and cry as they question me about my 1500 hours on Splatoon 💀
I'd say they are because I think I'm getting addicted to Lemmy. It's a habitual task in my free time now.
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.
I just want to add, that this is completely hypothetical. I was just fantasizing about slipping onto Trump's jury.
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.
Hellll no
No.
Tired of the constant erosion of civil liberties. This ain't civilization
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?
Disclaimer: Not a US citizen, but I think the reporting threshold is similar.
So, I recently applied for a bunch of US work visas as part of my job. C1/D, B1, and B2 to be precise. (Mostly to get my TWIC for easy port entry, honestly). And part of the process involved listing my social media accounts.
I don't use my Facebook anymore, and my lemmy (and then reddit) account isn't really significant. Beyond those, the only one with my name on it is my LinkedIn, which does in fact hilight an aspect of my job that shows why the above mentioned visas would be useful for me. So I ended up only listing my linkedin.
Visas approved. I don't think anyone cares hard enough to actually check unless your name is Daddy Al-Baddy
Legally, wouldn't you have to?
When you're answering the questionnaire, you're already sworn-in and under oath, so I would assume you'd legally have to. Not sure what the penalty would be, though, but I'm not really interested in finding out.
I guess they'd also have to prove it's yours, though. Still, even though I use a pseudo-anonymous name online, I don't post anything I wouldn't want my real name next to.
Edit: OTOH, you could probably refuse to answer which would likely get you dismissed. IANAL, though. The last time I was summoned for jury duty, they didn't ask about social media accounts or anything like that. Just a few questions that would have indicated whether I could be impartial.
That feels like a privacy issue, maybe related to the topic of whether or not they can force you to unlock your phone? I don't know where the current law is on that.
There are situations where responsiveness is compelled. If a judge rules that a question must be answered in voir dire, that’s a situation.
The solution, as it were, to compelled speech is that for example if you somehow are compelled into admitting to a crime, that speech couldn’t be criminally used against you. There has been at least one high profile case where compelled speech was used for a criminal conviction which we ended up being reversed.
Of course, a situation in jury selection where a question would lead to a 5th amendment issue and still be compelled seems very unlikely. More likely questions would simply be uncomfortable to answer. A judge has discretion to determine if a question is more invasive than useful. But something like social media posting related to the case seems like something most judges would allow.
Some comments in this thread are answering as if lawyers would be asking for the passwords or something. That’s not what’s happening.
From the thread comments, I believe OP is asking about giving up social media between the summons and the selection as a means to more likely end up on a jury.
Attorneys might ask about past social media use and you are supposed to tell the truth. I don’t feel comfortable with people scrubbing their social media history and then lying to the court about what may or may not have been on it, which is the undertone I’m getting in the thread.
In a higher profile case, bigger and more expensive attorney teams will probably spend more time and effort to snoop on prospective jurors, on lower profile cases attorneys will probably just ask jurors questions and look at their answer forms.
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?
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.
What if you are a heavy social media user, and the person on trial is a heavy social media user? Should they not get a jury of their peers?
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.
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.
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.
Maybe if that anonymous account has something relevant about it so you can protect yourself from potentially getting screwed over legally.
need more explanation?