Juries in the Age of Facebook

The Chicago Tribune recently ran a fascinating piece about whether a juror's blog postings impacted the fairness of a trial.

Judges have long instructed jurors not to talk about their jury service with anyone, including fellow jurors, and to avoid reading newspaper stories about trials. The fear is that jurors might develop a bias from information that's not been admitted in court. The right to an impartial jury is one of the principles of the American justice system.

But that right is threatened in a digital age when people post personal thoughts onto the Internet, whether on a blog or social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It's also become second nature to satisfy curiosities by searching for immediate answers on the Internet.

The article goes on to discuss issues like jurors using Google Street View to visit the scene of a crime, something they are physically prohibited from doing, but virtually? It gives an example of a murder conviction being overturned because a juror consulted Wikipedia as part of the deliberation process. The questions raised in this article are numerous and important!