On Wednesday morning, Tweetdeck blinked with a missive from CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell, live from jury duty at a court in New Jersey. "Thinking of saying that if they pick me on a jury, I would do a Twitter poll to determine the verdict."

We assume Rovell was kidding (and the rest of the day brought no such poll), but two recent law review articles -- on jurors' digital research and social media posts during trials -- reinforce what we've discussed before: judges and lawyers are worried about how jurors' use of social media affects what happens in court. Both papers indicate that jurors are generally resisting the temptation to tweet out of school -- and one study's author, District Judge Amy St. Eve of federal court in Chicago, said the best way to continue to prevent inappropriate juror behavior is as simple as telling jury members what they can and cannot do.

"Google, Gadgets, and Guilt: Juror Misconduct in the Digital Age" by Thaddeus Hoffmeister, in the University of Colorado Law Review, and "Ensuring an Impartial Jury in the Age of Social Media" by St. Eve and her law clerk, Michael Zuckerman, in the Duke Law and Technology Review, highlight many examples of trials that have been disrupted and verdicts that have been thrown out. So there's no doubt that some jurors are communicating in ways they shouldn't be. But when the study authors conducted surveys to get an idea of the extent of the problem, they found little evidence of widespread concern.

Fifty federal judges, prosecutors and public defenders responded to Hoffmeister's questionnaire, which focused on jurors improperly using the Internet to conduct outside research about cases they're hearing. Approximately 10 percent of the respondents "reported personal knowledge of a juror conducting Internet research," Hoffmeister, an associate professor at the University of Dayton School of Law, wrote.

St. Eve's paper included an informal survey of 140 jurors who served in either her courtroom or that of her colleague, District Judge Matthew Kennelly. St. Eve asked jurors whether they'd discussed cases via social media. Only six respondents reported "any temptation to communicate about the case through social media," the paper said, and none of them admitted to actually doing it.

Both papers note that their survey responses could drastically under-represent the actual behavior of jurors. Judges and lawyers don't know everything jurors are doing, and, even in an anonymous survey, jurors might not want to share all with the judge who just presided over their case.

Still, St. Eve said she wasn't surprised by how few jurors reported a temptation to talk about their trials via social media. "My experience is juries want to do the right thing, and they try very hard to do the right thing," she told On the Case. To assist them in that effort, St. Eve instructs her juries that using Facebook or Twitter to talk about their jury service is prohibited. She also said judges ought to explain clearly to the jury that social media can corrupt the trial process, noting, for instance, that if one of a juror's contacts responds to a post with incorrect or out-of-context information, that's not fair to the parties. Hoffmeister also makes the point that judges should explain clearly to jurors not only that they're not supposed to search the Web, but why they shouldn't. (Judges are increasingly likely to address social media in jury instructions. As St. Eve's paper points out, a recent survey of the judiciary indicated only 6 percent responding judges hadn't ever talked to their jurors about social media use.

Clearly, the Internet and social media are going to continue to be a presence in courtrooms, and if there's a takeaway from these two papers, it's that judges have to anticipate calamity, however remote that possibility may be. My colleague Carlyn Kolker illustrated that truth on Thursday, pointing out that California's upcoming celebration of Juror Appreciation Week includes a "Focus on the Courtroom" initiative to remind jurors that inappropriate use of social media is prohibited during trial.

(Reporting by Erin Geiger Smith)

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