Circuit Court

Courthouses across America have known for some time that blogging and social media is causing a problem with juries but a recent analysis from the Reuters news agency suggests it is a bigger problem than most of us realize.

Monitoring Twitter, one of the more popular social networking sites, Reuters has found that, "tweets from people describing themselves as prospective or sitting jurors popped up at the astounding rate of one nearly every three minutes."

What this demonstrates is that even though jurors are instructed not to discuss a case, many do not consider blogging, Facebooking or tweeting about jury duty to be "discussing" it and therefore believe they are following the judge's orders. This, of course, highlights the habit-forming nature of social media and the fact that so many Americans have simply become addicted to sending out messages all day long about where they are, what they are doing and what's on their minds.

The Reuters analysis of tweets lasted for three weeks during November and December of last year. While most juror tweets were benign, such as "I'm stuck on jury duty," some messages clearly crossed the line and raised serious questions about the fairness of trials. One juror in Los Angeles who goes by the Twitter name @JohnnyCho tweeted, "Guilty! He's guilty! I can tell!"

Increasingly, verdicts are being thrown out and trials started over because jurors have gone online to either discuss a case or to do their own legal research about a case. Some experts believe it is unrealistic to expect Americans, especially young Americans, to obey orders and stay offline during jury duty.

St. Louis Circuit Court was one of, if not the first, courthouse in the country to include the Internet and social media in jury instructions, a list of no-noes that jurors are warned to avoid.  This latest analysis proves that it is a topic we will be forced to revisit time and again as the world of social media continues to evolve.