Watch the comment threads on the Lindsay Clancy trial long enough and you’ll see it happen in real time— people who will never sit on that jury, admitting outright that the internet theories shaped how they read the testimony. Not evidence. Theories. And they said so themselves.
That should hit closer to home than we want it to.
When someone’s caught up in a pending criminal case, a lawsuit, a custody battle, whatever it is— there’s this pull to just tell your side. Especially once the rumors start circulating and you can feel people forming opinions about you that aren’t true. I get that. I’ve felt that pull myself.
But posting more doesn’t protect you. It doesn’t strengthen your case.
It may do the opposite.
Here’s what that “harmless” post could actually be doing:
- Shaping the opinions of people who may end up in your local jury pool.
- Handing opposing counsel a transcript to pick apart for inconsistencies.
- Revealing strategy— or information the other side didn’t have yet.
- Letting witnesses’ memories drift toward each other instead of staying their own.
- Becoming evidence, or at least the trail that leads attorneys straight to it.
- Wrecking your credibility the moment an emotional post contradicts your later testimony.
- Living on in screenshots long after you’ve deleted the original.
Let me be clear about what I’m NOT saying. I’m not saying every Facebook post becomes admissible evidence. I’m not saying jurors are out there researching cases— they’re not allowed to, and that’s a different problem entirely. What I am saying is simpler than that: once something enters a community’s social-media bloodstream, you don’t get to control who drinks from it, or how it changes them.
In a small community, your followers, your critics, the witnesses, and the future jury pool are not four separate groups.
Sometimes, they’re the very same people.
Before you try your case in the court of public opinion, remember something— that court has a way of eventually supplying the very people who end up sitting in the jury box.
Sources for digging deeper:
Irvin v. Dowd (1961) — the Supreme Court case that first established pretrial publicity as a fair trial issue
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/41
“Trial by Social Media” — a study finding 46% of mock jurors said they’d consult social media if serving on a real jury
https://www.academia.edu/70079644/Trial_by_Social_Media
APA Monitor — “Does pretrial publicity overly bias the prospective jury pool?” (2025)
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2025/06/pretrial-publicity-fair-trial
Simple Life 