If you watched The Today Show this morning, you heard that weatherman and punmaster Al Roker had to take off early to serve jury duty today. Roker obviously detected the immediate sense of loss from his adoring fans and made sure to keep them up to date with his moment-to-moment whereabouts on Twitter...from inside the courthouse.
Roker's been tweeting a steady stream of updates since arriving at New York State Criminal Court this morning, including pictures of other potential jurors from inside the jury lounge.TMZ has already said that their legal expert (and we're guessing they know a few) called Al's updates "a big no-no." Twitter has of course gotten oversharers like Al everywhere into trouble since its rise in popularity and jurors have been no exception. One lawyer recently filed an appeal of a civil trial verdict based on a juror's tweeting and the judge in the Astor trial warned jurors about using their Blackberries while serving their civic duty.
Roker wasted no time in firing back at TMZ's story this morning that he is "not breaking any laws...just sharing the experience of jury duty" and that court officials only said that pictures weren't allowed inside the courtroom. So naturally everywhere else in the building is fair game, right?
In case you're not a follower of Al on Twitter, he let everyone know that no one at jury duty is "hounding him" because of his celebrity status, he loves learning about the legal process and just generally finds that "therre (sic) is something very cool about being here." He thinks that the jury duty process is important and one that "everyone should take part in," even if we're all not as lucky to respond to Sam Champion's water cooler inquiry of choosing Betty over Veronica.
