If You're On A Jury, You Probably Shouldn't Ask Your Facebook Friends For Their Guilty/Not Guilty Votes

from the just-a-suggestion dept

Tue, Nov 25th 2008 1:51pm — Mike Masnick

Apparently, a woman in the UK came up with a rather novel approach to "crowdsourcing," when she used Facebook to ask her friends how they would vote in a criminal case for which she was on the jury. Not surprisingly, using Facebook in this manner got her kicked off the jury pretty quickly. Of course, I would guess this isn't the best way to get out of jury duty either, as I'd imagine such a stunt would put you at risk of getting charged with contempt of court as well.

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Filed Under: crowdsourced, jury, poll, social network
Companies: facebook

6 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 25 Nov 2008 @ 2:12pm

There could be a positive side to this-- Crowdsourcing for RIAA/MPAA cases where a Jury is involved may be great way of showing how a 99¢ song could be worth millions of dollars.

Muhahaha! The lawyers will thank me later: (Come on, guys it's more billable hours!)
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Nov 2008 @ 2:41pm

one of the fatal flaws of democracy is that its success relies on the naive notion that more than half of the people will be right more than half of the time.

what an idiot, and a prime example of how uneducated people are these days in this country.
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- You never know, 25 Nov 2008 @ 3:11pm
  
  Re:
  Ummm Coward? Are we on the same page here? This was in the UK...
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- You never know, 25 Nov 2008 @ 3:11pm
  
  Re:
  Ummm Coward? Are we on the same page here? This was in the UK...
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ralph, 25 Nov 2008 @ 3:30pm

Hmm
You can mention jury nullification during voir dire. Judges and lawyers hate jurors who are well informed.
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Rekrul, 25 Nov 2008 @ 4:46pm

You can mention jury nullification during voir dire. Judges and lawyers hate jurors who are well informed.

I was just thinking the exact same thing! :)
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