Deliberations

Why You Need To Know Whether Your Jurors Blog

Asking jurors about their blogs really can help you.  I have evidence now.

 

I had the honor recently of speaking to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, on the topic of jurors and social networking.  I love this topic because people still really want to hear about it.  It won't be too long before lawyers all know what an RSS feed is and can explain the difference between a group and a wiki; but until then, I can say something about social networking that most of the audience doesn't know yet.

 

When I've talked about this to other audiences, though, I've gotten some resistance.  Lawyers don't like to ask about something as personal as a blog or a Facebook page, and they're not sure it's worth it.  They've heard the stories about jurors whose blogs would have justified a strike for cause, but there aren't many stories like that yet, and those jurors were in other people's trials in other jurisdictions.  Surely they wouldn't need to ask about blogs in their trial?

 

The first four blogs on the list

 

So this time I did a tiny experiment before my speech.  I went to Jury Experiences, the best collection of juror blogs, and took the first four blogs on the list on the day I was searching.  They were on the list because each blogger had been called for jury duty and blogged about it.  I've read many juror blog posts before, but this time I wasn't particularly interested in what they said about jury duty itself.  My question was:  if a lawyer had looked at that juror's blog on the day the juror appeared for jury duty, would there have been anything important there?

 

On all four blogs, there was.  Not necessarily something earthshaking, but in each case, something you would have wanted to know about that juror before you decided on your strikes.  Here they are:

 

Blog One:   Boredom Advanced, a blog by an art student.  On the day he was on jury duty, if you'd looked at his blog, you'd have seen that he and his roommate were wrongly accused of vandalism, by school officials who were abusive in their questioning, and he wasn't happy about it. 

So I call the guy when I get the chance and he starts trying to feed me this line of crap about how they're certain that this is either mine or David's fault and how they're leaning towards David. So they're basically looking for me to point a finger at him and give them the confirmation they need to slap a fine on him. Never mind the fact that none of us did it and they are strikingly absent of proof of anything . . .

 

I just want them to leave us alone.

We didn't do anything.

If high-handed police questioning (or employer questioning, or any other kind of questioning) is an issue in your case, you want to know about that blog.

 

Blog Two:  The Journal of Rhiannon Black, a metalworker and gardener who says "I am not in my early thirties. I would like to be."  If you'd looked at her blog on the day she was in court, you'd have seen this exchange with a guy she'd hired to help with her garden:

 

He transplanted my Creeping Rosemary.

[He says t]his is because he dug up the rosemary without knowing what it was or something. But really, it doesn't fit in the island.

What island? I don't have islands. I don't want islands. Oh my god what is he planning to do to my yard?

I told him that he had to respect some ground rules if he was going to continue working for me. Boy, was I getting the "you're a fat bitch" looks from him. But we'll see how it goes. If he comes back and starts working without speaking to me, again, I'm probably going to tell him to leave and not come back. He's not a bad worker but I don't want him doing what I don't want him doing and then expecting me to pay him for it.

Nothing wrong with that; I'd react much the same way if somebody moved my creeping rosemary.  But there's a sense here of how this juror will interact with others, and perhaps assess her own perceptions if they differ from those of others, that you're not likely to see in voir dire.

 

Blog Three:  AdBroad, the "oldest working writer in advertising."  It's a terrific blog about women in the advertising industry -- less introspective than many blogs, but the author's bio is wonderfully informative, and there are moments like this:

 

It's Sunday morning in August and I don't feel like writing. I feel like reading. Something offline. The Times, in its original, crinkly version. Then something bigger. Bookier. Something literary. Which makes me part of a dwindling crowd. According to Amy Stolls, Program Officer at the NEA, fewer than half of American adults now read literature.

Again, you could live without knowing this.  But voir dire won't bring out that reflection on her sense of her place in the larger world -- the world of other jurors -- and it would be a shame to miss it.

 

Blog Four:  Mars Girl On Two Wheels, whose "love of cycling has sustained me through some rough times in my life." The blog is about both the cycling and the rough times, and it is personal and revealing.  The week before she went to jury duty, this blogger wrote a long post about why she cares about equal rights for gay and lesbian couples:

 

Even as a heterosexual, I can relate on some level to being forced to hide aspects of oneself from the public eye to fit in. As a child in middle and high school, I submerged aspects of my personality in order to fit into the group mind of the adolescents in my high school. Though trite compared to having to hide your own sexuality, the toll to my mentality was detrimental. I found myself doubting my own self-worth and it took a lot of years to undo the damage I did. I guess that's part of the reason I've gone the complete opposite direction as an adult in highlighting the unique aspects of my personality, calling myself Mars Girl to constantly remind people that I feel I am different. I'm tired of hiding who I am so I've let myself out of my own closet to tell the world, "This is who I am; like it or leave it."

If there's a person in your trial who is marginalized in any way, you'd want to know about that juror's blog.

 

That's four blogs, randomly selected, and four blogs where lawyers would have seen something valuable if they had looked.  It's not a statistically valid study; but I'm convinced.

______________________

 

Questions:  Are you asking jurors about their blogs yet?  What are you finding?

 

Related posts here:

• ATrial Lawyer's Guide To Social Networking Sites
• A Message From Erin
• Blogging Jurors, Part I (follow the links to II and III)
• If These Jurors Could Talk

(Photo by Annie Mole at http://www.flickr.com/photos/anniemole/85515856/; license details there.)

 

 

Questionnaire For A Tough Trial

While we're waiting for the judge to release the jury questionnaire in O.J. Simpson's robbery trial,* here's a questionnaire for collectors.  Voir dire is under way in the Arizona trial of accused serial killer Dale Hausner, and Phoenix trial consultant Dennis Elias kindly sent me the questionnaire they're using.

It's a long jury selection; it started on September 2 and it's still going.  Maybe that's to be expected when you're questioning 3,000 potential jurors, looking for folks who can get through a nine-month trial and who haven't formed an opinion in the face of very heavy news coverage.  (Think Washington Sniper goes west.  Hausner didn't help; his own letter to a reporter is on line.)

The questionnaire is 15 pages (longer when you add the witness list), a good basic criminal questionnaire with a death penalty section that's thorough without going on forever.  In several places it goes beyond the obvious, asking for example not only "Have you ever known anyone who was killed, accidentally or otherwise?" but also "Have you, a family member, or close friend ever killed anyone, accidentally or otherwise?"  You want to know both.

________________

*The judge in O.J.'s trial said she would release that questionnaire after the jury was seated, but testimony started today and I can't find it.  If you see a copy, please let me know.

Also on this topic:

• Deliberations' library of sample jury questionnaires
• How To Brainstorm Voir Dire Questions:  A Practice Exercise
• A Personal Collection Of Voir Dire Questions

The Secret Message In Every Bumper Sticker

I love the bumper sticker question in voir dire.  I've met lawyers and seen journalists who are surprised by it, or think it's intrusive, but when you think about it, it's a no-brainer.  If a juror holds an attitude so strongly that she'll paste it onto her car, you want to know what that attitude is.

New research suggests you should be interested in something else, too.  It isn't simply what jurors' bumper stickers say, it's whether jurors have bumper stickers at all.   Writing in the June issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Colorado State University researchers suggest that people with bumper stickers are more likely to be aggressive and angry people, or at least aggressive and angry drivers. 

Visualize THIS.

I haven't found a free version of the paper on line, but the Washington Post picked up the story (thanks to the Situationist for flagging this) and describes the research this way:

[Lead author William] Szlemko and his colleagues at Fort Collins found that people who personalize their cars acknowledge that they are aggressive drivers, but usually do not realize that they are reporting much higher levels of aggression than people whose cars do not have visible markers on their vehicles.

Drivers who do not personalize their cars get angry, too, Szlemko and his colleagues concluded in a paper they recently published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, but they don't act out their anger. They fume, mentally call the other driver a jerk, and move on.

"The more markers a car has, the more aggressively the person tends to drive when provoked," Szlemko said. "Just the presence of territory markers predicts the tendency to be an aggressive driver."

The amazing thing is that the aggression didn't change with the sticker's message.  Drivers who chose peaceful messages like "Visualize World Peace" were just as obnoxious on the road as those who slapped "My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student" on their bumpers.

My car, my street, my interstate highway

Those two drivers would call themselves each other's opposites, but they have an important trait in common:  a strong and confused sense of territoriality.  The Post article continues:

The key to the phenomenon apparently lies in the idea of territoriality. Drivers with road rage tend to think of public streets and highways as "my street" and "my lane" -- in other words, they think they "own the road."

* * *

Drivers who individualize their cars using bumper stickers, window decals and personalized license plates, the researchers hypothesized, see their cars in the same way as they see their homes and bedrooms -- as deeply personal space, or primary territory. . . ."If you are in a vehicle that you identify as a primary territory, you would defend that against other people whom you perceive as being disrespectful of your space," Bell added. "What you ignore is that you are on a public roadway -- you lose sight of the fact you are in a public area and you don't own the road."

Issues of anger, territoriality, and boundaries are critical in all kinds of trials.  If they're critical in yours, think a little longer before you keep -- or strike -- that nice lady with the "Coexist" bumper sticker.

(Photo by Hadi-helvetIQ at http://www.flickr.com/photos/23081931@N02/2490169298/; license details there.)

Commitment Issues

Is the Fifth Circuit trying to change the way prosecutors talk to jurors?

A few weeks ago I shocked the world -- okay, surprised a few people -- by pointing out United States v. Gracia, in which the Fifth Circuit reversed a drug conviction, finding that the prosecutor had improperly "vouched" for the credibility of federal agents who testified.  I thought, and some commenters (even defense lawyers) agreed, that what the Fifth Circuit had called vouching in Gracia was actually fairly routine argument. 

"Please raise your hand"

Last week the Fifth Circuit decided United States v. Fambro, and came close to reversing another conviction, this time because it didn't like the prosecutor's voir dire questions.  As in Gracia, when you look at what the prosecutor actually said, you might find the questions familiar:

Let’s say that law enforcement finds a box of grenades and they’re trying to determine whether I possessed those grenades. My first question, would it be important to you whether the grenades were found in my house or not? Would that be an important factor, do you think, in determining whether I possessed the grenades? How many think it would be important? If you do, please raise your hand.

Let me add another piece of evidence onto it. Let’s say the grenades are found in my house and that they are found in a box, and with the grenades in the box are some adult T-shirts that happen to fit my size, that are the size of shirt I wear. Do you think that would be important in determining whether I possessed the grenades or not? Okay. If you do think it’s important, please raise your hand.

Let me add one more twist to our little fact scenario. Let’s say that during an interview with law enforcement, I’m talking with the officer and I say, yes, the grenades were bought in Arizona. I was there and I brought them back to Lubbock. How many people think that would be important? Okay. Is there anyone here who thinks it wouldn’t be important?

If you had heard all of that and you were asked to decide, did [I] possess the grenades found in [my] house, how many people think I did possess those grenades? How many people think that I did not possess those grenades?

Can't I wait for the evidence?

These are called "commitment questions," and lawyers use them often, at least in my part of the world.  Frankly I don't know why they're so common.  I think they confuse jurors at best, and much more commonly really irritate them.  I've seen jurors resist one question after another like this, shifting uncomfortably while they tried to explain they'd really prefer to hear all the evidence, until they were finally beaten into saying that yes, this or that factor would be important. 

The Fifth Circuit doesn't like these questions either, and cites other courts to the same effect (I'm omitting the citations here):

A defendant’s right to due process under the Fifth Amendment requires an impartial jury at least to the same extent required by the Sixth Amendment. As the Eighth Circuit has explained, “although there are no constitutional provisions directly addressing the use of hypothetical questions during voir dire, there may be circumstances where a party’s manner of conducting voir dire renders a jury [non-]impartial and thereby triggers a Sixth Amendment violation.” We have stated that a voir dire question that “in effect asked the jury how it would weigh evidence it had not heard” would “not be a proper line of inquiry.” A majority of states appear to prohibit hypothetical questions to prospective jurors on voir dire to determine how they would decide fact issues in a case. 

Conviction affirmed

Fambro's counsel didn't object to the commitment questions, though, so the Fifth Circuit needed plain error to reverse, and didn't find it:

Nevertheless, we are unaware of any decision by the Supreme Court or any federal appellate court that has reversed a district court because it allowed commitment questions on voir dire in violation of the due process clause or the Sixth Amendment. Moreover, there was considerable evidence from which the jury could reasonably conclude that Fambro possessed the firearm. We therefore cannot say that the error, if any, was plain.

If your opponent starts asking commitment questions in voir dire, you have a valid objection.  With luck, you'll also have a jury panel that's tired of being badgered.  That's a good start.

(Photo by Ed Schipul at http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/2371505523/; license details there.  Schipul's blog, not photography but PR and marketing, is Brand To Be Determined.)

Ready For Anything

In voir dire you need to be ready for anything, and anybody. 

I botched this in my first voir dire, a practice one in law school.  "What do you do?" I cheerily asked a mock juror.  "I'm a garbage collector," he cheerily replied.

The great Irving Younger was our trial advocacy teacher at Cornell, and he'd told us to ask open-ended questions to get jurors talking.  I froze.  What could I ask a garbage collector?  Would he think I was mocking his job?  Would I embarrass him?  Or worse, would he be laughing at me?  Hopelessly entangled in overthinking this moment, I moved on to the next person, and learned nothing at all about my garbage collector. 

"Summoned for jury duty in my old male name"

I thought of that guy when my "jury duty" search picked up this inquiry at one of the forums at Susan's Place Transgender Resources, "a support resource for the transgender community":

I have been summoned for jury duty in my old male name. The last two times I was not required to go. I am to check the county web site on the Friday before to see if I am still required to go. It is ironic as I have to report to the courthouse where I plan to file for my name change as soon as I can put together enough cash for the filing fee. Another irony is that my Driver's license and other photo ID is now in my new name. The only way I have to prove that I am the person in the summons is a letter from my therapist stating my transgender status. I hope that should I have to go to jury duty that they will be discreet about it. I plan to go up to the official and immediately explain my situation. I will go in female mode as I have no male ID now. I did not see this coming!!!!

It's a pretty good guess that the lawyers who'll be doing that voir dire didn't see it coming either.  They're at their desks right now, going over the list of potential jurors, trying to figure out what they can from names, ages, neighborhoods, and occupations.  (Every Sunday night I get a surge in searches for sample voir dire questions.)  They think they're ready for Daniel or Thomas or whatever their list says that juror's name is.  But they're not.

You need to be ready for what you're not ready for.  The juror who tells you she has seventeen cats, the juror who tells you his child was killed, the juror who isn't a man after all -- you can't botch these moments.   Your compassion, your awareness, your intelligence, and your character will be judged on how you handle the next thirty seconds.  You need to be at the very least, as the transgender juror hopes, discreet.  Warm, engaged, and unfazed would be better.

Not about you

The more you've done in life, the easier this is.  The lawyers who are most adept at voir dire are the ones who excel at conversation with strangers generally, and those are so often the ones who had a lot of different jobs before they became lawyers.  But it's learnable -- take it from someone who's spent 27 years in the same job, longer in the same marriage, and almost as long in the same house.  You just need to forget about yourself for a second and think about the person you're talking to.  "We all thank you for the work you do," is what I should have said to the garbage man.  "You've been through challenges that few of us can imagine," you might say to the transgender juror.  "Tell me about your life now."

(Photo by Liz Henry at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/204197241/; license details there.)

A New Questionnaire, And The Impression It Makes

Here's a new proposed jury questionnaire for Deliberations's collection, from the upcoming federal corruption trial of former Orange County, California sheriff Mike Corona, his mistress, and his wife. 

The questions

You'd think that a case with that cast of characters might have few stipulations, but it looks like the defense is submitting questions jointly, and even the government agrees to some of them.  The proposed questions touch on infidelity, profanity, boat ownership, business gifts, and the racial controversy raised by Hurricane Katrina, among many other topics.  There's a remarkable list of almost eighty agree-or-disagree questions probing jurors' attitudes.  Many judges wouldn't put all those in a questionnaire, but they make a great voir dire checklist. 

The impression

Even better, this questionnaire comes with its own newspaper article.  When a newspaper features a jury questionnaire, the result is not only entertaining (this one is a lot of fun) but informative for trial lawyers.  The reporter is doing what your jurors will be doing:  trying to figure out why on earth you're asking these questions, and making judgments about you based on the questions you've asked.  If a reporter says your questionnaire "seems like a survey on 'Cinemax After Dark,'" some juror may be saying that too.

(Photo by Korean Resource Center at http://www.flickr.com/photos/krcla/362137815/; license details there.)

Jurors And Social Networking? So What?

"So what?"

I got that question from a member of the audience at the Wisconsin State Public Defender Conference last month.  Just what any speaker wants to hear.

But it was a good question.  I was talking about jurors' secrets, and stressing that no matter how good your voir dire is, potential jurors are unlikely to tell you about the experiences that most powerfully shaped them.  "So what?" this guy asked.  "Since I don't know these secrets, I can't do anything to respond to them.  Why are you telling me this?"

When we got to the topic of social networking and the ocean of information about jurors on the Internet, there were more questions on the same theme.  How am I supposed to use this?  More often than not, a juror who's writing on the Internet is writing anonymously -- and even if she uses her name, there will be sixty people with the same name writing other blogs, or posting weird messages on MySpace.  I'll never find my juror.  Why bother knowing all this?

Three reasons to know about social networking in voir dire

It's true there's no point in trying to find potential jurors in the vast expanse of the Internet.  But you still need to know about social networking when you stand up for voir dire.  Here's what to do with your new knowledge:

1.  Ask jurors.  You may not be able to find jurors' writing on your own, but you can ask them.  Do you blog?  Is your creative product, even so much as a Tweet or a photo, out there on the Internet in any way where someone without your password could see it?  How would I find that? 

Let them know you're not trying to pry (you don't need to see their passworded wish list at Amazon.com, much as you might like to), but you owe it to your client to fully understand what they've put out there for public view.

2.  Warn jurors.  Judges routinely warn jurors not to read or listen to radio, newspaper, or television reports about the trial, and not to talk to friends, family, or co-workers about it.  These warnings, especially when delivered in the usual monotone, may not be enough to jar jurors out of their Internet habits. 

Many jurors get their news and blog feeds, and a stream of news stories their friends have posted, delivered continuously to their computer screens.  Likewise many jurors head for their computers in the evening to blog or post about their day.  Alone in that room, typing may not feel like "talking about the case," even though it is.  When you know a little about social networking, you have the vocabulary to be sure tech-savvy jurors will follow the "don't read, don't tell" instruction.

3.  Just know.  Jury selection is about intuition, and the broader and deeper your knowledge about people is, the stronger your intuition will be.  You already know that the things you learned in your third-shift factory job in college, or the summer you spent clearing dishes at a country club, guide your voir dire decisions more reliably than anything you learned in law school or in this blog.  Think of social networking like that.  "EVERYBODY UNDER THIRTY IS ON THE INTERNET," Erin the blogging juror tells us.  If you want to talk to those jurors, you'd better have some sense of that world.

So what about secrets?

What about secrets, to come back to my questioner?  How does it help to know there are things you don't know?  It helps because the most ineffective speaker in the world is the one who assumes she has her audience all figured out. 

We all think we're humble, but we're not, or at least not always.  At some point each of us is like that smiling guy at the party, the one who has no idea the reason his joke fell flat is that your sister is gay, or your boyfriend is black, or your father is blind. 

When we remember how much we don't know, we speak with respect and restraint.  Without those qualities, we'll never persuade anybody.

(Photo by Paolo Mazzo at http://www.flickr.com/photos/paolomazzoleni/436307747/; license details there.)

A Trial Lawyer's Guide To Social Networking Sites, Part IV

It's done!  No, that's not true; it will never be done.  But here is the last installment of Deliberations' guide to the world of social networking, for your use in talking to potential jurors.  The entire guide is now a separate page on this site, filed under "Voir Dire Resources" in the side bar. 

It's a certainty that I've missed categories here, and and that new ones will pop up from the second I hit "save."  Please let me know if you see things that need to be corrected, updated, or augmented here, and I'll try to keep the page as current as I can.

Here's the last of the list:

Contests

The Internet has always teemed with contest sites, but often now the contest planners, contestants, audience, and judges are all site users.  Examples:

• Bix, "Create.  Enter.  Judge."  Typical contests are for cutest dog, best president of all time, and karaoke, karaoke, karaoke.
• Gather, listed above as a basic social network, has regular writing competitions.  October 2007 brought the announcement of the five finalists in the First Chapters Romance Writing Competition.

Comments

You can have a significant Internet presence without ever having a blog, social network page, or photostream of your own.  On thousands of sites, from large mainstream newspapers to major political blogs to individual photos on Flickr, readers can post comments, and many do.  When jurors write on line to defend their verdicts, they often do it in the comments to a news story about the trial; on this blog we've discussed examples here, here, and here.  To get a sense of how commenters get into conversations and develop recognizable personalities in comment threads, go to any major blog.  The WSJ Law Blog  and Firedoglake are two examples of blogs with heavy comment traffic and repeat commenters who get to know each other.

Forums

A forum is a discussion board, a little like comments without the underlying news story.  A user starts a discussion, usually by asking a question, and others respond.  Some forums are user-generated issue forums, offering a place for people to talk about particular challenges.  It would be hard to think of an issue there's no forum for:  pregnancy, parenting, cancer, weight loss, pick a problem and search it with the word "forum" and you'll find one. 

Other forums are associated with a particular business or author, most likely one who promotes a long-term approach that followers might need help with.  Thus Weight Watchers members support each other in on-line forums, and followers of David Allen's Getting Things Done books ask each other questions in forums on his site.   

As with comments, forums draw repeat participants whose personalities become defined.  At any given time, a given forum might have a few wise sages revered by all, some enthusiastic idea-offerers who pipe up often, a handful of new arrivals full of questions, and a rabblerouser who likes to challenge everything.

Groups

Most social networking sites allow users to gather into groups, but there are also "group" sites where the group is the main event.  Group sites offer a page where group members can see a shared calendar, posted files, and links, and they also offer a single group E-mail address that sends mail to all group members.  Groups can be as small as an extended family sharing baby pictures, or as large as FlyLady's group, whose 440,000 members (as of October 2007) get lots of daily reminder E-mails to help them stay organized and not overwhelmed.  (FlyLady's associated web site is here.  You'll either love her or want to flee.)  Examples of group hosting sites:

• Yahoo! Groups
• Google Groups
• WebRing

A variation on a group site is a wiki, where users collaborate to build web pages.   Big public wikis like Wikipedia are well known, but any work group, family reunion committee, or school club can have a wiki hosted at sites like

• pbwiki, "simple and secure collaboration"
• Wikispaces, "wikis for everyone"
• editme, "Edit your web"

Getting personal

The further you go down the social networking road, the more you find yourself in places where users might not want to be recognized.  Dating sites are the biggest example.  Consumers spent $500 million on Internet dating in 2005, about a quarter of the $2 billion spent on all Internet content (as opposed to, for example, on-line catalog sales) that year.  (Figures are from the Online Publishers Association.)  The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported in 2006 that one in ten Internet users had visited an on-line dating site, 43% of those visitors had dated someone they met there, and 31% of American adults know someone who has visited a dating site.  With numbers like that, it's likely that someone in the jury box knows a little or a lot about sites like:

• Match.com, "It's okay to look."
• eHarmony.com, "matches you based on compatibility in the most important areas of life"
• Chemistry, whose ads target those who were "rejected by eHarmony"

On the other hand, the technology behind dating sites is also used for things you could tell your grandmother about -- like Essembly, "a fiercely non-partisan social network that allows politically interested individuals to connect with one another."

Likewise, there are many ways that jurors might use the Internet that they'd want to keep private, even though they're fully legitimate.  People store their tax information on Turbotax, and look for jobs at Monster.com.  They can track their progress toward personal goals at Joe's Goals, and check their mental health on the various tests at Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness site.  They post lists of things they'd love to own, not only at scores of store sites like Amazon, but also at free-standing "wish list" sites" like TheThingsIWant.com and DreamofThis.com.  They do all this on the promise that their personal information won't be revealed.  Rule of thumb:  if you couldn't see a juror's Internet profile without that juror's own password, don't ask about it in voir dire.

That way monsters lie

And then there's beyond.  The American Gaming Association says almost 23 million people gambled on the Internet in 2005.  Oddly, I'm not finding statistics that look trustworthy to describe how much pornography is out there, but anybody with a spam filter knows it's a lot.  There are hate sites for every group you could possibly hate.  Lawyers who work in these areas have to learn this territory.  I have not had to, and hope not to.

Combine all ingredients and stir well

Got all that?  Great.  Now, to finish the list, think of as many ways to combine all these applications as you possibly can.  There's an application that lets you see your Facebook friends' Second Life avatars on their Facebook profiles, and "teleport" from there to wherever they are in Second Life.  Facebook applications like HobNob! let you request introductions to other people in the same way LinkedIn does.  "Profile aggregators" like MyLifeBrand are emerging to let users manage all their different social networks.  Mashable is the news source for all this; subscribe to their blog and watch the world turn a lot faster than you thought it did.

Just plain web sites

Finally, don't forget web sites.  Your juror might have a plain ordinary old-fashioned web site.  You'd hate to forget to ask about that.

(Image by Leigh Blackall at http://www.flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/64955397/; license details there.)

A Trial Lawyer's Guide To Social Networking Sites, Part III

The last installment of Deliberations' social networking guide ended with sharing sites. Let's pick up there.

Bookmarking sites

Bookmarking sites are sharing sites too, but there are so many of them and they're so powerful that they're worth talking about separately. Bookmarking users share things they've found on line -- news stories, blog posts, web sites. Other users get their news from the resulting flood of stories, and they in turn flag stories they like. As in other sharing sites, each user has an individual page where you can look at stories that user has shared.

These sites are big. On Digg, one of the leading bookmarking sites, the top story of the last 24 hours has been "dugg" almost 3,000 times as I write this. When somebody put one of my posts on Reddit, my page hits tripled, and stayed up there for three days.

Examples of the dozens of sites like this are:

• del.icio.us
• Digg
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon

Many feed readers have a "shared stories" feature that works like a bookmarking site. Deliberations' "In The News" feature consists of the stories I tag for sharing in Google Reader.

Games

Wikipedia has a separate entry for "massively multiplayer online role-playing game," or MMORPG. It's a game in which "a large number of players interact with one another in a virtual world," each living the life of a fictional character. The Wikipedia entry claims there were more than 15 million memberships in these games in 2006. Your character usually has a defined and changing personality, joins groups and makes alliances with others, and keeps interacting even when you're not playing the game. Some of the biggest MMORPGs are:

• World of Warcraft -- you're fighting your way through the fantasy world of Azeroth
• Omerta -- you're a gangster
• EVE Online -- you're in space
• World of Pirates -- you're a pirate, naturally

It's not all swash and buckle. You can post a profile with a picture in your online bridge club, spend the evening (or all night) getting to know the rest of your foursome, and head off to the chat room when you're the dummy. There are online multi-player games of all kinds, from chess to poker, where people are getting to know each other or some virtual projection of each other. You can also bond with those who would rather watch than play; 19.4 million people were playing fantasy sports games in August 2007, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association reported.

Second Life

Second Life is -- how to explain Second Life? It's an online world, "a 3-D virtual world entirely created by its Residents," the Second Life people say. As I write this on a Sunday evening in October 2007, there are more than 37,000 people directing their "avatars" through the events of their days and nights in Second Life.  In the last 60 days, almost 1.3 million people have logged in, and there are over 10 million "Residents" of Second Life's world.

Isn't that just a MMORPG, you'll ask, now that you know what a MMORPG is? No, say the Second Life folks, for two reasons. First is ownership. You own what you create in Second Life, and as the Illinois Business Law Journal reported in September, this means there is an active economy not only in virtual currency but also in actual currency for virtual property. (Read that again slowly. People are paying each other actual money for the right to own stuff that exists only on an Internet web site.) Second is flexibility. Second Life isn't a gangster world or a pirate world, it's a world:

If you want to hang out with your friends in a garden or nightclub, you can. If you want to go shopping or fight dragons, you can. If you want to start a business, create a game or build a skyscraper you can.

It's hard to convey how huge this thing is, and how closely it is interweaving itself with the thing we (so far still) call "real" life. Real professors teach seminars in Second Life classrooms, and students' avatars show up to listen. Yesterday, Timothy Zick guest-blogged at Concurring Opinions about a "Free Burma" event at Second Life, "which featured a 'human chain' event in which 500 people from 20 countries joined, as well as vigils and meditations in support of this cause." The event left Zick (and at least one thoughtful participant he quotes) wondering what it was about Second Life that made this event powerful, and whether it will inspire activism offline as well.

Part IV, to come, should finish the series.

(Image by Leigh Blackall at http://www.flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/64955397/; license details there.)

The Silent Stereotype

A mock trial not long ago taught me a lesson about anti-Semitism. One of the presenting lawyers was Jewish, with both first and last names suggesting that heritage. The other lawyer had a name and a look suggesting Irish ancestry.

The case had nothing to do with religion. The Jewish lawyer spoke second, and the jurors filled out questionnaires. One juror said that at that point he was siding with the Irish lawyer. In the blank for "Why?", he wrote, "Christian argument."

"You didn't really say that, did you?"

This week Ann Coulter said on CNBC that Christians wanted Jews to be "perfected," and of course she started people talking. Scott Greenfield flagged the story early, and then decided Coulter wasn't worth his attention. Others debated whether Coulter was (correction: whether the idea of "perfecting Jews" was, see the comment) really anti-Semitic, with Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft saying yes and David Bernstein at Volokh Conspiracy and Paul Horwitz at PrawfsBlawg saying no.

To me, the key phrase of the interview wasn't something Coulter said. Instead, it was the reaction of her interviewer, Donny Deutsch. When Coulter said, "We just want Jews to be perfected," he said: "Wow, you didn't really say that, did you?"

However you define anti-Semitism and whatever you think of Ann Coulter, the interview is a reminder that negative attitudes and stereotypes about Jewish people are very much alive, and very much taboo as a conversation topic. Many jurors hold these views, and they're among the most difficult attitudes to learn about in voir dire.

The Anti-Defamation League's 2005 Survey of American Attitudes Towards Jews in America is its most recent look at these stereotypes in the U.S. The press release for the survey is here and a more detailed set of slides on the survey results is here.

"Probably true"

You can't just ask folks what they think of Jewish people, so the survey asked instead whether respondents agreed with a list of "index" questions. Here is the percent of respondents who said each of the following statements is "probably true":

• 50% say Jews stick together more than other Americans.
• 32% say Jews always like to be at the head of things.
• 33% say Jews are more loyal to Israel than America.
• 15% say Jews have too much power in the U.S. today.
• 17% say Jews have too much control and influence on Wall Street.
• 19% say Jews have too much power in the business world.
• 15% say Jews have a lot of irritating faults.
• 15% say Jews are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want.
• 15% say Jewish business people are so shrewd that others don’t have a fair chance at competition.
• 12% say Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind.
• 12% say Jews are not just as honest as other businesspeople.

Fourteen percent of respondents said that six or more of these statements were probably true, making them "unquestionably anti-Semitic" as the ADL defines that term. That number is down from 17% in 2002.

Who holds these views? The ADL couldn't tie them to respondents' religion, economic situation, or political affiliation. They did find that negative Jewish stereotypes were highest among people 65 and older (24%, twice the rate of any younger group), African-Americans (36%), and Hispanics, especially those born outside the U.S. (29% and 35% respectively).

So in voir dire . . .

If you're trying a case that clearly involves allegations of anti-Semitism, your task in voir dire is clear, if challenging. Since these issues are already on the table, you can invite jurors to have the same kind of open discussion about their relevant experiences that you would in any other case. You're particularly looking for lack of interaction with Jewish people, since stereotypes grow where experience is missing.

If you're an ordinary Jewish lawyer heading into an ordinary trial, your task is much more difficult. You can't ask whether they have a problem with you, or even come close to that. (The same is true obviously if it's your client or a key witness who might trigger these stereotypes.) All you can do is be alert, to the kinds of vocabulary and related attitudes that might signal a problem.

It may be helpful to know that the ADL's survey found that people who strongly believed negative Jewish stereotypes also agreed strongly with these statements:

• "Students do better attending schools with people from similar racial and ethnic backgrounds."
• "AIDS might be God’s punishment for inappropriate sexual behavior."
• "It bothers me to see immigrants succeeding more than Americans who were born here."
• "Books that contain dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries."

Wish they'd asked more questions like that.

(Photo by Windell Oskay at http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/313881232/; license details there.)