Video: Lawyers Using Social Media To Pick Jury

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GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Miss. (WCBI) — For the last decade, attorneys use social media evidence for their cases but now they’re going one step further by using it to pick the members of a jury.

Some local attorneys discuss the new law.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We are constantly sharing our information through social media sites.

But be aware that information is now available to more than friends.

“It allows the attorney a lot of access into personal information you can see what that person is like what they like what they do for a living and there is lots of other things you can determine whether they will be a good juror for your case,” says Jeff Hosford.

The American Bar Association just granted lawyers and judges to use social media to question.

Starkville attorney, Jeff Hosford believes this new access could hinder a verdict of a case.

“In a case a lawyer can’t even talk to a member of the jury it’s against the rules so what they try to do is they try to limit that now. The question is will Facebook and all the other social media devices allow someone to become closer to that person more easily,” says Hosford.

Like Hosford, Columbus attorney Carrie Jourdan sees it as a double edge sword.

“It can be good in that it contributes to research but then there is also a point where it’s also pretty invasive but you know we have to have that balancing,” says Carrie Jourdan.

Jourdan says evidence pulled from personal websites is not only admissible in court, it can make or break a case.
“Experienced primarily in the form of evidence but we are getting to the point where we have jury panels we’re questioning about them. Haven’t had it come up in a serious way in a death penalty case but defiantly now when we do a death penalty case we’re going to pull the Facebook profile of everybody involved,” says Jourdan.
While social media has already changed the way we communicate, it was only a matter of time before it changed the face of justice.

Jurors’ social media postings have been known to lead to mistrials.