Lawyers Use Facebook to Pick Jurors, by Nick McMaster, The Newser, February 22, 2011

Lawyers Use Facebook to Pick Jurors

By Nick McMaster
The Newser
February 22, 2011

http://www.newser.com/story/112606/lawyers-use-facebook-to-pick-jurors.html

In this courtroom drawing, Federal Defender Fiona Doherty, left, addresses the Court at federal court in New York, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011.

Here's the latest way Facebook is changing life as we know it: Lawyers snooping for extra information on potential jurors have been looking them up on the site, the Wall Street Journal reports. "It's a waterfall of information, compared to the pinhole view you used to get," says one lawyer, who, while defending a priest on sex abuse charges, rooted around candidates' pages to get a sense of how devout they were.

The practice often works, because Facebook is "the place where people voice their opinions," says one jury consultant. In some cases, legal teams have used seemingly inconsequential information, such as a predilection for TV crime shows. People who love CSI, for example, might have sky-high expectations about DNA evidence.