A woman who blabbed on Facebook about “dying from boredom” while serving on a jury has been slapped with a $1000 fine.
Kimberly Ellis, of Queens, New York, was on a jury for a case about a 2014 robbery when she began making detail-filled posts, sometimes twice a day, from a courthouse in the Queens neighborhood of Kew Gardens.
According to The Daily News, which accessed a court transcript, this was a post Ellis made on 17 September:
Everything about this process is inefficient. I’m trying to remain positive and centered but, truthfully, I’m dying from boredom.
The complaining kept coming after the jury began deliberations.
Another of the oversharing juror’s posts:
God help me. The other jurors don’t trust the police and want to outright dismiss the confessions as well as the majority of the rest of the evidence. Tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day.
She was ratted out by one of her Facebook friends who just so happened to be a former federal and Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office prosecutor.
On 30 September, Queens Supreme Court Justice Ira Margulis called Ellis out.
From the court transcript:
Margulis: "Now, can you tell me why you did this?"
Ellis: "Well, I sometimes - I suppose I forget it’s so public and it’s Facebook and it’s something that I use a lot. And I’m pretty quiet in my day-to-day dealings with people, so it’s just a way for me to, you know, express myself."
Margulis: "Even though you violated an expressed order from the Court not to do that?"
Yes, even so, Ellis said, admitting that the court had made it clear that jurors are forbidden from using social media while serving.
Ellis:
I wasn't thinking clearly. I apologize.
Ellis was found in contempt of court. Margulis gave her this advice before dismissing her:
It is in your best interests that you retain an attorney.
With Ellis off the jury and no alternate waiting to take her place, the case was declared a mistrial.
The judge made clear how costly a mistrial can be.
In fact, it costs taxpayers thousands of dollars, Margulis said, ticking off some line items:
We had an interpreter in that case. We have the court reporter, we have the clerk, and everybody else associated with the case and including the district attorney's time and effort and defense counsel.
This is just wasted taxpayers’ money because of what the defendant did. And it’s not that she was not aware.
He also explained the difficulties a mistrial presents to the victims who have to testify:
One of the robbery victims because of what happened to her moved out of state and came back for the trial.
Ellis is remorseful, she told The Daily News:
I continued my personal life as if I was not there to judge a trial It was my first time as a juror, and I was naive.
She also said she’s “absolutely frightened I will lose my job over this.”
My ex-husband is disabled and I raise my two children. I'm afraid this will impact them. I'm very scared.
There’s probably not much we can say about Ellis’s actions that she hasn’t already said to herself.
At any rate, she’s not the first person to find herself in hot water over social media posts about a trial.
In April, Judge Michelle Slaughter, from Galveston County, Texas, was chewed out for making Facebook posts about a case that resulted in a mistrial and was ordered to get trained on “proper and ethical use of social media” by judges.
Slaughter was cleared of wrongdoing in September, though a three-judge Special Court of Review noted that a judge’s use of social media is a murky territory where care is needed.
The Houston Chronicle quotes the review panel judges:
A judge should never reveal his or her thought processes in making any judgement. While [Slaughter's Facebook] comments were ultimately proven to not be suggestive of her probable decision on any particular case, the process for reaching this conclusion required the expenditure of a great deal of time, energy and expense.
Social media can be a pleasant bubble.
We can get lulled into the feeling that we’re just chatting with friends who sympathize as we share our gripes or who exult with us when we, say, post selfies of ourselves with a winning ticket …that crooks can use to make a counterfeit ticket and thereby swipe our money.
Let’s all try to remember that what seems, to us, to be inconsequential moments of boredom and glee can have deep, serious, costly consequences when we share them publicly.
Image of lawyer talking to jury courtesy of Shutterstock.com
JimmehX3 (@JimmehX)
Is it bad that my first thought was: Does this get her expelled from future Jury trials?
Robert Winkelmann
You know you could just TAKE THEIR PHONES….but hey that would make too much sense for the courts.
krhawkins06
when I went for jury duty, they didn’t allow cell phones or purses.
Toad
Yep it’s the courts fault . It’s always someone else’s fault . Maybe it’s time to grow some balls and take responsibility for your own action like this person did .
Roberta King
but did she really take responsibility she made a lot of excuses for her behaviour… sometimes you have to just be more responsible and if you were told no social media then you shouldn’t be on it… really is it that important in your life that you can’t go a few days without it while a trial is going on? and no I don’t believe it is the courts fault at all this women is an adult and can take ownership of her actions and not make excuses for her actions…
Anonymous
A lot of this type of mistake just wouldn’t happen were it not for Facebook’s policy of setting all accounts to’ public ‘ by default. Many people don’t realize this and their posts are going public without their knowledge. It would be a lot more responsible of Facebook if accounts were set to ‘private’ by default, and people who wish to go public could change their settings accordingly.
Dan
Even then, that wouldn’t have protected this persons so called right to privacy. Did you not read that a friend of her’s made the report a District Attorney? “She was ratted out by one of her Facebook friends who just so happened to be a former federal and Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office prosecutor.” So even if it were set to private she would have still been ratted out.
The solution is people should not blab what they expect to be private thoughts on a public domain oriented website. People these days expect more privacy controls, yet are too naive and ignorant to realize that the controllers of their privacy rights are their minds and and their finger tips. Want your Privacy then Control what you blab in public and on the internet. Only then will people understand that they cannot collect data on you if you do not blab it out.
Lisa Vaas
Even if she’d marked her posts as private, she still would have been violating the law, which doesn’t differentiate between private vs. non-private social media posts about court cases.
Roberta King
but even if it is private then her family and friends that she has on her list can still see it and that isn’t okay at all… if they told her no social media it shouldn’t be that important in her life that she can’t go without it for a few days… it isn’t facebooks fault it is soley her fault for not being adult enough to just stay off of facebook, twitter, etc for a few days…
LindaB
I think courts and such buildings, like schools, should make use of the blocking technologies available to prevent mobile phone signals getting inside the building. There are too many instances of people not thinking clearly when they patently should be – as in this case.
If you are in such a place and need to communicate, use a landline or go outside.
School secretary
All of the schools in our district have wi-fi. Facebook is blocked on every one.
JimmehX3 (@JimmehX)
I’ve never been in a courtroom as a juror where the jury was allowed to have their phones.
This could have been after the trial was over for the day. The juror would have been under orders not to talk about the case, use social media, or any other media that could disrupt the jurors information as presented in court.
Dave
Hey! Noo Yawuk! Preceding posts notwithstanding but being on point, how much has Noo Yawuk wasted on cops killing innocents? This is in the minutiae, in the weeds.
And on topic, Facebook is one of the most dangerous entities extant and anyone who uses it routinely deserves whatever he/she/it/they get. Pay attention peeps! FB and the like exist to mine YOU, and sell you to the highest bidder.
Just say NO!
Gebildete
It’s so unbelievable how dangerous can be Facebook, Twitter, konstruktor etc. I understand that we are unconsious today of what content we post on the social networks. We get accustomed to comment everything we see around us and express our feelings not only to other people but on the social networks. We should be aware what information we share and who is the audience.