When picking a jury, lawyers always try to stack the panel with people likely to take their side. Now, some are taking the vetting process to a new level: they're quietly trawling social networks and other sites to ferret out the most intimate details of potential jurors' lives, from their sexual orientation to their income level and politics.
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"Jurors are like icebergs -- only 10 percent of them is what you see in court," said Dallas-based jury consultant Jason Bloom. "But you go online and sometimes you can see the rest of the juror iceberg that's below the water line."
In Columbia, Missouri, criminal-defense attorney Jennifer Bukowsky builds Excel spreadsheets about prospective jurors using Facebook, MySpace, Google Inc and a state database of civil and criminal actions called Case.net. During a trial in Circuit Court for Boone County, Missouri, late last year in which her client, a black male, was charged with sexual assault, Bukowsky hoped to keep a white female juror on the panel because the woman's Facebook page included several pictures of her with a black man -- which Bukowsky took as a sign the woman was not racist. Full story...
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(...)
"Jurors are like icebergs -- only 10 percent of them is what you see in court," said Dallas-based jury consultant Jason Bloom. "But you go online and sometimes you can see the rest of the juror iceberg that's below the water line."
In Columbia, Missouri, criminal-defense attorney Jennifer Bukowsky builds Excel spreadsheets about prospective jurors using Facebook, MySpace, Google Inc and a state database of civil and criminal actions called Case.net. During a trial in Circuit Court for Boone County, Missouri, late last year in which her client, a black male, was charged with sexual assault, Bukowsky hoped to keep a white female juror on the panel because the woman's Facebook page included several pictures of her with a black man -- which Bukowsky took as a sign the woman was not racist. Full story...
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