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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."
... 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.
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.
... 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
If he were black?
The same would have happened of course. He'd still have a rich and influential father.
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.
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