No Stupid Questions

Good answers here, but ignoring probably the most realistic and practical truth of the matter in my opinion.

You won't immediately be sent to the stocks for saying "I don't want to answer", the worst case scenario is that some officer of the court informs you that you must answer the question even if you don't want to. And even that is only going to happen if the attorney asking the question insists. And I struggle to imagine a situation where a competent attorney would do so.

Being hostile towards your prospective jurors, making them feel exposed and uncomfortable, is not a way to march to victory in a trial. They want to ensure you aren't prejudiced against their client/case. Making you dislike them personally IS prejudice. Causing prejudice is a bad way to eliminate prejudice.

They will ask questions, mostly yes/no ones, that you need to answer honestly. They may ask for clarification. If you don't want to answer and say so, it's unlikely anyone will press you because that unnwillingness to answer is just as clear an indication of who you are as anything else.

What exactly is the legal definition of "social media" anyway?

Personally I don't consider lemmy or reddit to be social media, they're more like several forums in a trench-coat.

Nobody was being asked for their social media credentials, it's not like you have to give them full access. What happened was that the attorneys looked the jurors up and went through their old posts, all stuff that was publicly available. One of the jurors they dismissed posted a picture of people celebrating Biden's election win, and that was enough to show that they were biased.

Absolutely not. If asked, just refuse to answer, don't lie. But, I've been summoned a few times and they've never asked about that, so far.

I just want to add, that this is completely hypothetical. I was just fantasizing about slipping onto Trump's jury.

How would that be enforced?

No.

Tired of the constant erosion of civil liberties. This ain't civilization

Can't you just politely decline and then they relieve you from duty? Or can they coerce you into doing a digital striptease for them?

Hellll no

Legally, wouldn't you have to?

When you're answering the questionnaire, you're already sworn-in and under oath, so I would assume you'd legally have to. Not sure what the penalty would be, though, but I'm not really interested in finding out.

I guess they'd also have to prove it's yours, though. Still, even though I use a pseudo-anonymous name online, I don't post anything I wouldn't want my real name next to.

Edit: OTOH, you could probably refuse to answer which would likely get you dismissed. IANAL, though. The last time I was summoned for jury duty, they didn't ask about social media accounts or anything like that. Just a few questions that would have indicated whether I could be impartial.

Disclaimer: Not a US citizen, but I think the reporting threshold is similar.

So, I recently applied for a bunch of US work visas as part of my job. C1/D, B1, and B2 to be precise. (Mostly to get my TWIC for easy port entry, honestly). And part of the process involved listing my social media accounts.

I don't use my Facebook anymore, and my lemmy (and then reddit) account isn't really significant. Beyond those, the only one with my name on it is my LinkedIn, which does in fact hilight an aspect of my job that shows why the above mentioned visas would be useful for me. So I ended up only listing my linkedin.

Visas approved. I don't think anyone cares hard enough to actually check unless your name is Daddy Al-Baddy

The court has more important things to do than inquire about your internet history, and you'd have to be a moron to bring up the subject.

Why would they ask about social media at all?

I was just about to ask this same question in a different thread. I’m in a similar situation, in that Lemmy is the only social media I use (Reddit before the API crap), but I’ve never used my real name. I’d happily own all my comments, but the point of an anonymous account is that I don’t have to. I guess when you’re under oath it doesn’t matter, you have to truthfully answer the question that’s asked.

What if you are a heavy social media user, and the person on trial is a heavy social media user? Should they not get a jury of their peers?

Thanks for the participation everyone!

My conclusion is that the question is moot. You most likely won't be asked to give up your entire social media activity. But you can be asked about the content if it's relevant to the case.

Perjury is serious beyond the penalties, and i solemnly swear that i had no intentions of doing so.

Don't give anything. It can disqualify you, but this is no different than asking your grandma for her diary before they let her sit a jury.

Answering the question in chronological order, during the voir dire portion of the jury selection process, jury candidates would be asked a battery of questions by the parties to the case, plus by the judge, to determine if the candidates can be sufficiently impartial as jurors. Some qualities are -- legally speaking -- so inherently prejudicial that a juror could not sit on the jury, such as being a active judge in a different court. Other qualities are potentially prejudicial, such as if a candidate is a police officer and the case is about police brutality.

For a case where social media evidence will play a large part, the parties may not want a juror that is keenly familiar with memes and the latest online trends. The lawyers would be permitted to ask about social media use, and could remove the candidate if their answer indicates some articulable bias that isn't an illegal category (eg sex, race). Alternatively, they can remove a candidate peremptorily, without describing their reasoning, but the number of these removals is limited.

Since the question supposes that the jury has already been selected, it may have been that the case didn't involve social media or the lawyers and judge didn't ask about it. However, jurors are always asked if they have any reason they cannot be impartial, so jurors would have to speak up if they have any doubts at all, vis-a-vis their anonymous social media accounts.

Still, after the selection process, when the jury is impaneled, they will be asked to avoid seeking out relevant news articles or discussing the case with anyone outside the jury room. This is not as rigorous as sequestration, but this would include avoiding posting on social media about the case. Jurors are usually free to carry on with the rest of their lives, with that in mind.

Thus, to answer the question, an anonymous social media account doesn't need to be "given up", unless it would affect the case somehow. But having such an account is potentially disclosable during the jury selection process. Ideally, the inquiring attorney would simply ask about the nature of the anonymous account, rather than forcing them to out their account.