Jury misconduct didn’t start with Twitter, but reports of jurors behaving badly via social media are on the rise. In a new study, two Illinois judges urged their colleagues to tackle the social media problem head-on in jury instructions.
U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve of the Northern District of Illinois and Judge Charles Burns, in the criminal division of Cook County, Ill., Circuit Court, surveyed hundreds of jurors in their respective courts during the past three years. They asked jurors about their temptation to communicate about a case through social networks while serving.
