I am an attorney who is about to begin a jury trial. I have obtained a list of all of the jurors and have gone on social media to learn about some of these jurors. I see information that would show that some jurors are extremely biased one way or the other. Do I have an ethical duty to advise the court if the jurors don’t state the bias they are showing in social media when they are questioned?
The question is an interesting one and one that lawyers are going to have to grapple with in the future. If the lawyer has done a lot of diligent work on social media and discovered that certain jurors are very biased toward the defense and this is a criminal case, what obligation does the lawyer have to tell the court that the jurors expressed great bias toward criminal defendants on social media, or something of that nature? Obviously, if they expressed a love of police officers, I am sure there would be no issue but to tell the court.
