Social media continues to wreak havoc in courtrooms across the country. Despite repeated warning from judges, jurors are continuing to comment on cases via social media, “friend” parties to the lawsuits, and conduct their own Internet research outside of the courtroom.
All of these activities are strictly prohibited and threaten the validity of any resulting decision issued by the jury. However, lawyers and judges can’t seem to figure out how to stop the behavior.
In 2012, the federal courts implemented new jury instructions that directly address the use of Twitter, Facebook, and other similar services. Below is a portion of the revised instructions to jurors:
Firefox recommends the PDF Plugin for Mac OS X for viewing PDF documents in your browser.
We can also show you Legal Updates using the Google Viewer; however, you will need to be logged into Google Docs to view them.
Please choose one of the above to proceed!
LOADING PDF: If there are any problems, click here to download the file.
Published In:
Constitutional Law Updates
DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.
© Donald Scarinci, Scarinci Hollenbeck | Attorney Advertising
