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Use of social media to explore the histories and potential
biases of a jury pool is relatively new, but it is rapidly gaining
in popularity. While voir dire can be an effective tool for weeding
out obviously biased jurors (and those who do not want to serve),
it can be difficult to get complete, detailed and truthful answers
from all prospective jurors.
Social media can help. In jurisdictions where a list of
prospective jurors is provided to counsel in advance, social media
screening can be performed in advance and in detail, can help
expose juror bias, and can help craft voir dire questions to
eliminate undesirable jurors without wasting peremptory challenges.
Social media can reveal work history, political affiliation,
charitable activity, personal and professional relationships and
affiliations, purchasing habits, hobbies, socioeconomic status and
many other traits that may impact a juror's way of thinking
about a case.
If the names of prospective jurors are not made available in
advance, using social media can be more difficult. Certainly,
attorneys cannot examine jurors' Facebook pages during active
voir dire of the panel. However, counsel should consider having
another attorney perform social media research on jurors during
questioning. Although time constraints will prevent the attorneys
from probing as wide or as deep as they could if they were able to
do so in advance, even a shallow investigation might weed out a
problematic juror or two who might have otherwise made it
through.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.
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