The AP reports from San Francisco that the American Bar Association “says it’s ethical for lawyers to scour online for publicly available musings of citizens called for jury service – and even jurors in deliberations,” but the ABA “does warn lawyers against actively ‘following’ or ‘friending’ jurors or otherwise invading their private Internet areas.” The AP notes that although “judges now universally admonish jurors to refrain from discussing trials on social media, the nationwide lawyers group for the first time is addressing how deeply attorneys, their investigators and their consultants can probe for information that might signal leanings of potential jurors, or unearth juror misconduct during trials.” Jurors’ online postings “have disrupted many legal proceedings over the years, causing mistrials and special hearings over the effects of Facebook musings, tweets and blog writings about their trial experiences, “and attorneys and judges “have also been wrangling over how far attorneys can go in assembling a jury with help from online research of jurors’ social media habits.”
From the news release of the American Association for Justice.
