How Facebook Can Help You Get Out Of Jury Duty

By Anna North  |  February 22, 2011 | 10:25pm
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Lawyers are now using Facebook to weed out potentially problematic jurors. UFO enthusiasts, amateur sexperts, and keg-standing college students, you’ll never have to do jury duty again!

According to Ana Campoy and Ashby Jones of the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has become an important part of the jury-selection arsenal: “prosecution and defense lawyers are scouring the site for personal details about members of the jury pool that could signal which side they might sympathize with during a trial.” And while some object to the practice, a few courts have upheld it as totally legal. One DA is even considering trying to get potential jurors to friend him so he can access even more of their data.

Some may see a privacy issue here, but we see a golden opportunity. Want to get out of jury duty? Just fill up your Facebook page with crazy shit (and make sure to make it public) right before the selection hearing. Want some suggestions? Take this:

David Cannon, a Los Angeles-based trial consultant, discovered on blogs that a potential juror in a personal-injury case had made extensive attempts to contact extraterrestrials. He recommended that his clients, who were representing the defendants, not select her. “It just showed an instability,” he said.

Or this:

Jury consultant Amber Yearwood in San Francisco found that one potential juror in a product-liability case last year held strident opinions on a host of issues, and dispensed unsolicited medical and sex advice.

So basically, reposting a bunch of Jezebel links should do the trick.

Searching For Details Online, Lawyers Facebook The Jury [WSJ]

Image via zimmytws/Shutterstock.com

 
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