By Ann Woolner
Bloomberg News
ATLANTA — A Somali convicted of attempted murder wants the verdict tossed out, claiming his prosecutor wrote unkindly about his nationality on her Facebook page during the trial.
A high school honors student gets suspended for calling a teacher the “worst ever” on Facebook.
The Somali’s effort is probably doomed, and the high schooler from Florida, now in college, went to court to wipe clean her disciplinary record. She won a favorable ruling this week in an early First Amendment victory for social networkers.
“It upholds the principle that the right to freedom of speech and expression in America does not depend on the technology used to convey opinions and ideas,” the student’s lawyer, Maria Kayanan of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the – New York Times. I’m a fan of free speech myself, but a privacy nut when it comes to setting my life’s details aloft into cyberspace.
Here is what I want to know: Do people think that when they post a comment, a video, a photograph on the Internet, only their confidants will see it? Have they forgotten it is called the World Wide Web?
Another example: An Indiana man accused of killing his fiancee’s 2-year-old was haunted at trial by an anti-social rant he had written on the social networking site MySpace.
If people want to expose their inner thoughts and bad conduct online, that’s fine by me.
But if you’re considering that, realize that those who post won’t benefit
from it as much as their critics will. If you are tempted to let the world in on your dark secrets, think again.A young woman in Texas trying to get back parental rights to her son should have resisted the urge to post photos of herself drinking, explaining through labels she was “Dranking it Up” and boasting “I can dance when I drunk.” At the time, she was too young to drink legally and under court order to break no laws.
And a California coed found herself looking at a five-year prison sentence for a deadly drunken driving accident, a penalty enhanced because she posted photos of herself on MySpace showing her drinking after the fatality. The judge saw that as a lack of remorse.
This isn’t to say you can’t overcome your poor judgment. The California student’s sentence was later reduced, and a judge eventually ruled that the Texas mother’s postings weren’t that damaging, after all.
But those two young women could have saved themselves a lot of misery by staying offline in the first place. Besides, you can’t count on setting it right later.
In the Indiana murder case, Ian Clark’s MySpace entry tended to undercut his claim that he killed the toddler out of drunken recklessness, not because he has a criminal mindset.
Written before the child’s death, the online entry made it clear Clark had been in trouble with the law before. “Society labels me as an outlaw and a criminal,” he wrote. And although the entry rambles incoherently, he clearly claims to have gotten away with something and urges others to do the same.
It was hardly the strongest evidence against him. He was hurt more by the cold, hard facts, his own, smart-alecky testimony and his remark to a cop when arrested: “It’s only a C felony. I can beat this.”
Still, Clark argued on appeal that his conviction should be set aside in part because the judge shouldn’t have let the jury see his MySpace entry.
The Indiana Supreme Court ruled against him last October, saying Clark had raised the character issue himself so the posting was fair game.
The point is that MySpace is everyone’s space.
Meanwhile in Minnesota, Ahmed Ali is hoping that Facebook entries posted by the woman who is prosecuting his case will win him a new trial, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The newspaper reported that Ali’s motion to throw out the verdict says, “The posts concerned derogatory statements about people from Somalia, and that she felt comfortable with her case because of a juror who attended St. John’s University.”
Huh?
Details on the posting weren’t immediately available from either Ali’s lawyer or the Hennepin County attorney’s office.
If Ali’s skeletal allegation proves true, it wouldn’t be a good thing for the prosecutor to ruminate about a trial in progress via Facebook. All the more unsettling if she impugned the nationality of the accused or implied that a juror would be pro-prosecution based on academic degree.
It may turn out to be unprofessional. As grounds for reversing a conviction, it sounds silly.
Either way that case goes, it bears repeating: Just because you can say pretty much anything that strikes your fancy, whether through social networking or twittering or that ancient form of communication, e-mail, doesn’t mean you should.
It may feel intimate as you type away, just you and your keyboard. But there is a world of people on the other side of the screen who may demand a price for your blissfully free speech.
Source : sltrib.com
No comments:
Post a Comment