A juror on a highly-publicized Australian murder trial dubbed the "Tinder murder" nearly brought down the whole thing because she couldn't stop posting pictures of coffee to Instagram.
According to the ABC, as jurors deliberated for a fourth day in the case, defense attorneys for Gable Tostee requested a mistrial after they discovered one those jurors had been posting her daily coffees to the 'gram and discussing her position as a juror in the comments. The comments, as seen in screen grabs from her Instagram account, were mostly just the woman's musings on her coffee and the walls she photographed it in front of, but they did mention the trial.
Australia has a strict rule that jurors can not communicate about their case with anyone outside the jury and can face up to two years in jail for breaking it. The rule doesn't specifically cover social media, though, which reportedly has some in Australia making the case for updated legislation. In the end, a judge decided that while the juror, whose name was not released, definitely "skirted" the law, her actions weren't enough to force a mistrial.
That ended up being a good thing for the defense. Tostee was found not guilty of murdering Warriena Wright during their first date at Tostee's apartment, where Wright, then 24, fell to her death from a balcony on the 14th floor after an apparent altercation between the two in 2014. Tostee, who was then 30, met the woman on the dating app Tinder.
