"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.)
