As part of our periodic practice, we are checking in on the reported cases involving social media evidence for this past month of January. A quick tally identifies 74 cases where social media evidence played a key role last month, which continues the trend we saw with a significant upsurge in such cases in the second half of 2013. One interesting development for January involved separate cases of misconduct on the part of a judge and a prosecutor, respectively. Below is a brief synopsis of five of the more notable January cases. While improper juror social media use is a common occurrence in the cases we monitor, the first two of the five highlighted January cases involved judicial and prosecutorial misconduct allegations from their Facebook activities:

Chace v. Loisel (Florida Court of Appeal, Jan. 24, 2014)  2014 WL 258620

In this Florida divorce case, the judge presiding over the matter sought…