Slashdot Mirror
Social Networking Sites Becoming Useful For Lawyers
chareverie writes "With how the internet has become, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have become a tool for crime solvers, employers, and now, lawyers. Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunk driving case, the college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner, with the words 'jail bird' on his costume. Not surprisingly, his prosecutor was able to obtain photos of him at the party that were posted on Facebook, and claimed he was an 'unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital.' The photos were presented in a slideshow, with one of them showing Lipton holding a can of Red Bull in one hand, and an arm draped around a girl bearing sorority letters. The judge agreed with the prosecutor, and changed Lipton's sentence to two years in prison. The article also cites other instances of people getting harsher sentences from pictures of them posted online."
title should be "useful for prosecutors". while prosecutors are "lawyers", this article and topic is far more specific.
... of douchebaggery.
Last week some 18 year-old punk was speeding and hit two women who were in town from St. Louis to see the Cardinals play the Phillies. One of them later died.
The cops found his MySpace page, and it's apparently full of pics of him drinking and smoking pot, and the article even says he used a mugshot from a prior arrest as his default photo. The cops got wind of it and snagged his computer and other stuff from his house with a search warrant, and they'll probably use it to stave off any attempt at the "but he's a good boy who just made a mistake" defense.
After reading the article, I am completely disgusted... especially with his parents, under whose noses it seems much of his bad behavior has been going on. Call me old-fashioned, but I think parents should try to raise their kids to, you know, not be a colossal fuckup.
The best part, IMHO, is that for all his "I'm just Mr. Buster Badass" posturing on his MySpace page, he is apparently throwing up in jail because he's so scared (insert derisive Nelson Muntz laugh here).
~Philly
The laws should be defined more explicitly, so that the same punishment for the same crime can be applied.
Leave it up to the judge and jury. They will have intimate knowledge of the case, a legislature hundreds of miles away won't.
People with certain personalities
Personalities? What in the hell? Is "dumb" a personality? Read the article, man. People like this deserve to go to prison.
and as we know certain races,
No, I don't know.
get effected disproportionally because the law gives too much flexibility in determining the severity of the punishment.
Wait, what?
too much flexibility
All right. How about this: mandatory death sentence - Texas style, not California - for anyone convicted of drunk driving.
Happy, now?
Any fucktard that drives drunk deserves - at the very least - a serious asskickin'.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
I don't have a problem with this. The kid obviously did not take the weight of the crime he committed seriously - he acted with contempt and callousness. Someone who acts like this, versus someone who does something bad but admits he was wrong and regrets it, should, as far as I am concerned, receive more punishment.
As far as you claims about race is concerned, that is totally bogus.
This is correct use of technology- hands down, a winning proposition.
Now, it may not be so when prosecutors dredge up photos unrelated to, older, than, or from a different person with the same name, so this only argues for more transparent ways for hosts, services, and users to find unshakeable ways to authenticate what happens under their aegis. opt-in automatic encrypted transmission watermarks, anyone?
responsibility, what a concept!
(or learn 2 anon, use 7 proxies, etc)
I don't understand the problem here either. This is two "OMG Privacy" stories that have come up in the last few days. This isn't "OMG Privacy". This is quit being a fucking moron and advertising your private life to 3rd parties or the world. In each of the three cases I am fucking glad they found those pictures. Those pieces of shit deserve to be rotting in prison instead of out partying after that crap. In case you skip the article it talkes about 3 cases of DUI, in 2 of which people died and the third almost died. Then these pieces of human filth went out partying and posted pictures showing exactly how seriously they took the fact that they went out driving drunk and murdered someone. I am personally very happy these fuckwits posted these pictures and the prosecution found them. In at least two of the cases mentioned here the bastard was probably going to get probation.
So...let me put it this way. If you are a worthless dumbass criminal making life worse for other people PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE post pictures of yourself doing illegal things online. Record yourself talking about the crime and make it an mp3. Take videos of you beating hobos or other nonsense and put them on youtube. I would much rather a society where the criminals effectively go to the authority and say "Hi, I'm a fucking moron criminal asshole, please arrest me!" than the world where the cops have to wiretap, and search, and investigate. So, please, in the interest of keeping our society free, go post your stupidity online, make it easy to find, that way the authority can leave the rest of us the fuck alone since we aren't doing anything wrong.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The amount of true remorse that a defendant feels and expresses can and should be used when determining sentencing. It's called a 'mitigating circumstance.'
Did it ever occur to you that there were circumstances, such as prior history, that could affect the sentence? The claim that blacks are being unfairly punished is a totally bogus one.
... but on the "races" bit, yes, for the same offense, blacks more often get jail time while whites walk. Justice might be blind, but it ain't colour-blind when it comes to sentencing.
I've heard that, but I'd need to see some actual data. Not a press release from a Leftist "thinktank".
I suspect the gap would magically disappear if you took the socioeconomic levels into account. I'm sure a poor white kid (with a public defender) would get a worse sentence than a black kid from a rich family (with a family-hired lawyer).
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
All right. How about this: mandatory death sentence - Texas style, not California - for anyone convicted of drunk driving.
DUI level drunk driving or .15 swerve all over the road drunk driving?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
What does a 25 year old (former) sex-offender from Texas, have to do with this 20 year old (former) college student from Rhode Island? Other than that they have the same names?
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
The claim that blacks are being unfairly punished is a totally bogus one.
No, it isn't. See http://archives.cnn.com/2000/LAW/05/04/civil.rights/index.html and http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2006/01/should_criminal.html for starters.
#!
So what we have is a guy who was known for drinking alcoholic beverages, now drinks non-alcoholic Red Bull instead. Any lawyer worth his or her fee, would've pointed out this evidenced change in behaviour as a sign that the subject no longer drank, and therefore should have a reduced sentence.
It's all down to the interpretation.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"I don't know about preventing prosecutors from using photos. However . . . to deter employers from viewing and abusing social networking pages, employees might post legal terms of service [blogspot.com] under which employers agree to scram."
I'd just look at the pages anyway then use the information as I see fit. I have no obligation to hire someone I don't like, and any insights into how that person will work on my team matter to me.
The whole purpose of social networking is vanity and self-display. Fine and good, but don't expect to display then choose how viewers can use what you put out there.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
until such time as the preponderance of judges and attorneys can be embarrassed by archival pictures/movies on the Internet.
#!
Did I get that right? He went to court, got away with a rather mild verdict, then the prosecutor showed that he is "partying" and this is grounds for a more serious conviction?
Hello? Did partying now become some sort of grounds for a harsher verdict? What should he have done? Mourn and weep for at least 2 years or whatever the court deems "appropriate"?
This is sick, people. This means you're not only judged for what you do but also for what you feel.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If he were black?
The same would have happened of course. He'd still have a rich and influential father.
Well, I did a google search, and in a few moments found such work. (Remove references to Conrad Black -- most results have cites to the original sources.)
This sort of thing saddens me. People actually think that the US has become entirely color-blind? And, Slashdotters aren't able to do google searches?
And I've personal experience with this too. I was on the jury of a murder case. It was astounding how often certain other jurers brought up race. For instance, apparently, all black men come "from the same place" and can tell each other apart perfectly!
Obama admitted to doing drugs, and he's not going to jail.
Yet, once he's president, he'll have the official capacity to pardon all non-violent drug offenders... think he'll do it???
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
I work as an Orientation Leader at my college; familiarizing incoming freshman with the campus and what it's like to be a college student, etc. One of the things we warn them about is to not put anything on facebook that they wouldn't want their family to see. Of course, they don't listen and we've had RAs write kids up for things they've done just because the RA saw pictures of it posted on facebook.
When kids get their room assignments, they instantly check their roommates out on facebook. Every now and then we hear stories that even before they've met the roommate, parents ask for a new one because the roommate's facebook page makes them worry the kid might be gay.
This sig is false.
Last I checked, Red Bull was NOT an alcoholic beverage. Had he been photographed drinking alcohol I could understand the increased sentence.
If I were an employer and I saw such a codicil posted on the web site of somebody who wanted to work for me, that would be sufficient cause for me to instantly toss their application in the dumper. Otherwise, I would just surf there from a non-company computer and get my fill of proof of malfeasance on the part of the applicant with the applicant being none the wiser.
And how could it possibly benefit any employer to agree to this? It does not violate a prospective employee's civil rights in any way - they themselves posted the material on a public web site available to anyone who wants to surf on in and see it. It would be like demanding that the HR Department at Xerox not be allowed to review or keep an applicant's paperwork if the applicant wrote "FUCK XEROX" in 50-point bold all over the back of the thing. If they had any brains at all, they just wouldn't hire that person.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
I guess some people still can't get in through their skulls that the internet isn't some sort of silly game. If you post something, anyone has access to it, including law enforcement. It's like that woman who tried to take out a hit on someone via Craigslist a while back. What the hell is going through these people's minds?
I actually read the article to see if it was as bad as it sounded... and yes it is.
First of all, he was drinking Red Bull, which is non-alcoholic, and while he was at a party I'd be thinking he'd be excited to be alive. Just me though.
The other cases in the article are just as bad. A lady at a party drinking wine after a car accident? Wine just screams alcoholic!
The prosecution is saying she should be in AA? They know that she's an Alcoholic and didn't just make a bad choice? She's no longer aloud to drink anymore because of a bad choice? AA doesn't teach you to act correctly when you drink, it tried to get you to stop drinking completely
And to say "she was doing nothing but having a good time" is insane. Obviously she's been going from party to party non-stop for the past X months. How do you know she WASN'T going to AA? Just because you have a picture of something less than appealing doesn't mean you have to whole story.
I have to imagine they'd have more than that for a Judge to up the sentence to two years. Not to say I don't think they deserved it but expecting people to become inhuman because of an accident is just plain stupid. A guy drinking red bull is a good example of just how RANDOM these pictures can be and yet they are grounds for upping a sentence? give me a break.
Have George Bush on your friends list.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
You could make that argument for anyone that breaks the law. People should know they will be held accountable for their actions.
Laws are meant to protect society. If this guy, with his cavalier attitude toward hurting people, goes out and does it again...then what? Will you be ready to "fudge up his life" then?
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
He'll only have the capacity to pardon non-violent drug offenders in federal prison -- not those imprisoned under state laws.
Most things I hear or read deal with sentencing disparities based on the race of the victim. Here's a GAO report (PDF) from 1990 submitted by what appears to be the Senate judiciary committee. Strom Thurmond is listed among the submitters. He's hardly leftist.
From the findings:
The findings section does discuss some reasons their results are not the last word on this subject.
http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat11/140845.pdf
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
I can tell you here in the south that if a black and a white both get busted for drugs,the white will get rehab and the black will get the pen. I have also been slammed up against the police car and had the cop tell me to my face " I don't know which makes me more sick: a long haired freak like you or the nigger you're riding with". So yeah,I hate to break the news to you,but the clean cut white boy walks while the black rots in jail. Is it fair,hell no. But that is the way it is. Unless you increase police pay by a hell of a lot more than it is now you are going to always have bullies taking the job for the power.
I have also sat in court waiting to buy my way out of a pot bust(I know,a long haired white boy that smoked pot:shocking) and watched as black kids that had less than I did get sent up for anywhere from 6 months to as high as 3 to 5. Meanwhile I paid $800 and got told after my lawyer had a nice little behind the scenes talk with the judge to "have a nice day". Is it fair? Again,not so much. But as the old saying goes "money talks". I was just surprised how little money it took to walk away. But don't ever doubt for a second that your race, appearance and financial status affects how you are treated by the law. And as always this is my 02c based on my experiences with the system,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Not really accurate. What you are in fact saying, is someone foolish enough to allow photos of them to be published on the internet which could possibly be interpreted as them being unrepentant, rather than perhaps being severely depressed and attempting to deal with that depression by the foolish consumption of alcohol which would alter their behaviour by affecting inhibitions.
On the other hand of course are people who were careful enough and had better friends and hence no pictures were published of their activities, when attempting to deal with the guilt, shock and of course trying to bury the fear of upcoming penalties for their poor behaviour.
After all isn't it extremely rare for people to deal with stress by drinking alcohol, or when dealing with depression, or when attempting to assuage a guilty conscience. Either the judges should wake up to themselves or everybody should be treated the same under law, that after all is one of the most important principles of justice that all should be treated equally.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This is sick, people. This means you're not only judged for what you do but also for what you feel.
Ummm, you realize that this isn't a new thing, right? The facebook part might be, but many lawyers have often pushed for lenience in cases where clients have shown true remorse for their actions, and vise-versa for the prosecutors against those who don't.
Feeling sad for your actions and being willing to change is part of the reformation process, which is part of what the justice system is about. A kid that's partying it up 2 weeks after killing somebody isn't feeling remorse, and isn't so likely to reform after a slap-on-the-wrist or token sentencing.
morale of the story.. don't put your private life on public display.. because sooner or later someone will use it to their advantage
Yet, once he's president, he'll have the official capacity to pardon all non-violent drug offenders... think he'll do it???
He'll only have the capacity to pardon offenders of federal drug laws, not state.
It's shit like this that makes me want to become a defense lawyer. Fuck this prosecutor. The case needs to stand on what happened, not on the defendant's sense of humor.
The case did stand on what happened. This was sentencing, which does take into account the defendant's likelihood of recidivism, repentance, social utility, etc. And the defense uses mitigating factors (first offense, volunteers at a homeless shelter, joined AA, etc.) just as much as the prosecution does, if not more.
Maybe you should become a defense lawyer - a few years of law school would let you give an informed opinion on this instead of talking out of your ass.
OK, what is the coping strategy of the guy in a wheelchair for the rest of his life?
What is the coping strategy of the parents of the kid he kills while driving drunk?
What is the coping strategy... Oh wait, nevermind. You have the same mindset he does. Fuck everyone else, you will be assimilated, and I can do whatever I want. Fuck your laws, rules, guidelines, etc. I CAN DO WHAT I WANT.
Entitled punk. Welcome to the real world. The world where you actually have REPURCUSSIONS for your actions. Where when you FUCK up, it can come back to HAUNT you.
That's the problem. His own actions / photos PROVED he was a "3 strikes" kind of kid. Bottom line. Had he had a little bit of intelligence (beyond how to pour a whore into bed), he would have realized that his popularity show (myspace page) COULD have fucked him in the future.
But, then again, he would probably have signed up for an ARM mortgage, drove an Escalade EXT, complained the entire time about how much it costs to drive it, etc. all the time wondering why he has no money living above his means.
Intelligence at it's finest.
--Toll_Free
No he wouldn't have.
There are no black men in this country as powerful as George H. W. Bush. Period.
Frankly, I'd rather elect someone who openly admits to behavior that may be in violation of law than someone who obsessively hides from the reality of his or her past. Both Nixon and GW Bush come to mind here.
And I wonder about Senator McCain with respect to admissions. Of course he did admit to wrongdoing with respect to the Savings and Loan scandals as well as other issues of favoritism. I have met Senator McCain and think he's a good man. Haven't met Senator Obama but I have read the thoughts of his he put into his books. Seems like an upstanding American patriot who would strive to do the right thing for America.
But what I cannot believe is that Senator McCain, after all he went through, did not do drugs and did not drink to excess. I lived across the street from a Vietnam veteran who was not imprisoned by the NVA and there were not enough drugs and there was not enough alcohol in the world for him after what he experienced as a draftee. I lived up the street from another who came back a paraplegic, and he regularly drank to excess.
Fact is, what you put on the Internet about yourself is public. So if you don't want someone to take advantage of you or to disparage your character, don't post anything that might be taken wrong. This lawyer was doing what all lawyers do in a very creative (for lawyers) way: He was raising questions as to the man's character before a jury so that the jury would disregard any testimony from him or from anyone who said he had a good character.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
"The best part is why have Facebook and MySpace so even those of us without the brainpower to use even the simplest of markup can easily show off for the entire world what kinda of asshats we can be when we really try."
I still don't get why people even use facebook (or any social sites). Near as I can tell, it's a vestige of the adolescent misconception that you are the center of the universe and everything you do is interesting and important.
Perhaps that's not fair. It persists well into adulthood as well.
The fact that everything people do and say online lives forever and will affect you for the rest of your life seems to have not sunk in with many people. I'm glad my adolescence and early adulthood are long gone and forgotten by everyone. I can't imagine trying to explain what I did 30+ years later when I was in my mid teens.
I'm assuming this whole thing is like the hula hoop. Seemed like a good idea for a while, and then we threw them out in the late 60's.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
There really isn't any reason why one that is drunk or under the influence of drugs, should be sitting at the wheel.
I think you will find there is very little reason involved in such senseless crimes. DUI punishment is already pretty severe, yet people still do it, probably because they are drunk and can't reason.
Then again, even very smart and reasonable people still commit pretty dumb crimes which are already punished by death (Re: Hans Reiser)
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Let's not forget the possibility that a culture that built up around gangstas, bragging about prison time, and shooting people in the face for dissing you; might actually be committing more crimes. What is the product of this kind of culture? Black youth are six times more likely to die of homicide than white youth and seven times more likely to commit a homicide. Homicide is the leading cause of death among African-American males ages 15 to 29. I don't think about skin color, it's about cultural values. Bill Cosby has it right.
We are all just people.
yes, but they don't usually caption these drinking-jailbird-costume-wearing pictures "Remorseful?"
Any fucktard that drives drunk deserves - at the very least - a serious asskickin'.
Set the BAC limit at a reasonable level and I'd agree with you. MADD, really a neoprohibitionist group, has been pressuring states to constantly lower the BAC to a point where it's really meaningless. .08 BAC, most drunk driving accidents are caused by recidivist alcoholics with a much higher BAC. If you really want to save people from drunk drivers, focus on them.
While there is measurable impairment at a
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So the college kid who hasn't lived long enough to be a "recidivist alcoholic" but who still has a .15 on the road gets... what? And the high school girl who "just had one beer" but weighs 90 pounds? How about all the other multitude of situations where people are unable to drive? I agree that BAC is a bogus measure, but, well, impaired is impaired. For that matter, why do drunks get jail when an old lady who plows into a crowd of pedestrians gets her license suspended for a month? It's an imperfect system, that's why. Run for town council if you want to change things.
If you can't drive after even one drink, you should be arrested no matter your BAC. Learn to drink at home, or at a bar that calls taxis for you, or, for cripes sake, with a designated driver. People stupid enough to take/post pictures of themselves like the people in the article (yeah, I read it) deserve the harsher sentence as they are showing that they are not remorseful and that they can't plan ahead ("gee, no one will ever see this if I post in on the intertubes!")
In general I don't have a problem of using extra sources of information like Facebook. What I find disturbing about this is that the judge's decision was influenced, even according to the judge, by photos that someone else posted to facebook. From what I can tell that photographer was never cross-examined to establish the actual context of the photograph. For all we know, someone who didn't like the guy might have coerced him into a non-representative situation for a moment so they could snap the photo to put on Facebook, then tag him in the photo to make it easy for any prosecuting lawyer to stumble upon.
Was he dragged to a party by friends to take his mind of things after 2 weeks of hell? Who else was there? Were they all close friends, and were they the sorts of people who'd try to embarrass him for his mistake? Well I hope the courts investigated that properly. Perhaps he did deserve what he got in this case, but if it's as easy to influence a judge as this article implies, it concerns me.
Tee Vee doing gangsta rap doesn't make that indicative of what you call "black culture"
I didn't that it "black culture", you did. I go to But the gangsta culture, is primarily made up of African-Americans. So when a very large percentage of gangsta culture goes to jail for the crimes that are bragged about on the radio, everyone says it's discrimination against African-Americans. Of course the black folks you know don't act like that, you met them in church, which if you had read the link to Bill Cosby's speech you would have seen that not going to church is one of reasons for the cultural failing of poor urban culture. My church here in NYC is about 25% Black, 40% Latino, 35% White. We don't have any gangs, we don't have any shootings, most everyone there is a very decent person (except me I'm a bigoted asshole). But when I come home from work on the subway and over hear a group of teenage boys bragging and laughing about jumping some kid, six to one: "Ha ha ha, I kicked him in the head BAM. Gotta respect me son." Can you guess what kind of music was playing from the crappy speaker in one of their cell phones? I'll give you a clue, the music strongly advocated that the way to get bitches was to earn money and respect by shooting people for failing to give you money and respect. I see something similar close to one a week. Now, this was at at 11pm on a week day, during the school year. Where the kids you knew growing up allowed at age 15 or so to be out at 11pm miles from home on a school night? Since I work evenings, I also get to see the kids hanging out during the day while school is in session. Guess what most of the teenage kids I see skipping school have in common? A culture that places very little value on education or authority. Now perhaps it is just chance that the majority of those kids have the same skin color, but it's not chance that those kids, embracing that culture, end up being crime statistics. Modern poor urban culture is a recipe for disaster. Until the people that propagate that culture face up to that, the situation will only get worse. Not everyone who is black is a proponent of that culture, but most of the people that propagate the culture are black. The culture is the problem, but the skin color is what is reported in the statistics that seem to point to racism.
We are all just people.