I have old Facebook and Twitter accounts, maybe some others. I’m old so there’s a MySpace account out there. But I’ve mostly been using reddit the last decade or so, and have migrated to Lemmy. Now, Lemmy is the only social media i use. Recent news got me thinking about this question.
Yeah, that’s why I added that bit at the bottom. You could probably safely decline to answer, but they’d likely dismiss you for that. Which, if you just want out of jury duty, may be a way to do it lol. Either way, you should definitely not lie and say “no”.
I’m on the go, but I believe the mechanics for the most jurisdictions is that a refusal to answer would then be put to the judge as to if an answer must be compelled or not.
If you assert a right to silence for possible self-incrimination reasons, or if the question is very personal and the invasive nature outweighs the value of the question, a judge may rule against needing to answer. If the judge rules that you are compelled to answer, a continued refusal may lead to a contempt charge. That’s something of a worst case and I think it’s more likely the judge would dismisss as a practical matter. This would not cost the attorneys any of their freebie jury dismissals.
That means if you had for example highly biased social media history and were refusing to answer because you’re trying to sneak something past and get seated, it really doesn’t help you because you get dismissed by the judge and it doesn’t even cost the “opposing” attorney anything. If the judge rules that you don’t have to answer, the “opposing” attorney can still dismiss you because they got a bad vibe.
If you have biased social media history and you’re trying to get out of jury duty, if anything you’d want to talk about it as much as possible.