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Family Has Right of Privacy In Decapitation Photos
big6joe sends in an update to a morbid story we discussed last year: a California appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling, granting the family of an 18-year-old woman who was killed in a traffic accident in 2006 privacy rights and recourse against the California Highway Patrol. "In a case that highlights how the ease of online communication can overthrow both common sense and basic decency, a California appeals court has ruled that families have a right of privacy in the death images of their loved ones. In 2006, an eighteen-year-old woman was decapitated in a traffic accident. Two of the police officers who reported to the scene emailed photos of the woman's body to their friends and family one Halloween."
In 2006, an eighteen-year-old woman was decapitated in a traffic accident. Two of the police officers who reported to the scene emailed photos of the woman's body to their friends and family one Halloween."
Sounds like they have a problem with immature police officers as well. Hopefully the officers got reprimanded for doing that.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
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...than the Ohio Dept. of Public Safety films we were forced to watch in driver's ed showing decapitations, amputations, and other sordid details meant to "shock" us into not driving drunk/impaired/stupidly?
It's human nature to look upon the misfortunes of others as something fortuitous for the viewer: The idea of "Thank God that's not me or a loved one". And to be truthful here, the Newsweek article pointed to in the original /. story did mention that the M.E. found cocaine in the girl's system, even though the family tried to put the blame on a brain tumor. The family should embrace the opportunity to show young people what happens when they choose to get behind the wheel after a few lines of coke.
My friend was recently run over (Age 20), crossing a highway drunk.
I thought it sucked when we found out and turned into the news to see his dead body, bloody on the highway. At the same time a select few saw the aftermath up close ("Cleaned up")These are things people see and have to clean up.
These images remind us all of our fragile mortality. I ride my motorcycle much more conservative since my friends passing.
If people saw reality more often, I think reality would become less grim as people realize how eggshell life really is.
I fail to see how this is any different from the thousands of people who rubberneck and gawk as they pass an accident on our nation's highways.
If you go out and kill yourself in public, chances are very good people are going to see your dead body. That's what "public" means.
I guess the "problem" here is that it was the police that distributed the photos instead of some hapless bystander who happened to have a cell phone or digital camera? I can understand if they're compromising some homicide investigation... damn right they need to get in deep trouble for that, but if all signs are that you managed to kill yourself in darwinistic fashion (as this appears to be), then your death SHOULD serve as a lesson to the rest of humanity.
The pictures ended up on sites like 4chan, and idiots even found the email addresses of the family and sent trick emails containing the images. They also made harassing prank calls. So the difference in this case is that the officers who distributed the photos directly caused pain and suffering to the family by leaking the pictures to the rest of the world. There are some very cruel people out there who think being callous makes them funny.
...identified the victim in the photos and sent them out as a Halloween joke. The images flew across the Internet and the same sick people who frequent the gore sites across the internet emailed the images back to the family with taunts, ridicule and abuse.
Sure, the girl drove under the influence. She paid for it with her life. I think that's sufficient punishment. Her parents buried their teenage daughter. I think that's more than enough punishment.
Speaking as a father, the bad guys in this story are the officers on the scene. How they could think it was OK to use those photos for their own sick little joke on Halloween is beyond me. How they could think they had the authority to release those photos to the public at large is beyond me. Has law enforcement become so craven in this country they don't understand what we mean by "respect for the dead?"
I've seen the Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg videos. I think they should be required viewing for every adult of voting age in this country, because seeing those two videos provides context for foreign policy decisions we need to vote on. I can even see the usefulness of "mechanized death" videos that try to make a point with immortal 16-year-olds, provided the footage is anonymous and separated by a healthy number of years.
However, I can also see the difference between a major newsworthy event that should inform foreign policy and two ghouls in uniform getting their sick little jollies at the expense of grieving parents. Sick minds like these need doctors and asylums, not badges and guns.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
of an 18 YEAR OLD ADULT
Sorry, what?
The way you're phrasing it, it has more in common with a voyeuristic paparazzi taking photos of a celebrity sunbathing in their fenced back yard. Not following?
1) The scene of an accident is not often "public". It gets cordoned off pretty quickly by police. Police officers taking pictures of her body for personal purposes was a breach of duty - and dignity.
2) The woman was dead. It was not an 18-year-old woman, it was the body of a deceased loved one (to someone); once you die, "ownership" of your body goes to your next-of-kin. Pretty sure the cops didn't get the family's permission.
Note: I'm not speaking in defense of the family, here. I think they should probably just get over it: there are surely bigger fish to fry, though I suppose they're doing their part to get rid of these poor LEOs.
Embracing the opportunity to show the impact of illegal chemicals on driving is FAR different than cops emailing out the photograph as a Halloween joke.
If people saw reality more often, I think reality would become less grim as people realize how eggshell life really is.
I wonder to what degree the views that underly this ruling exist outside the US. Photographs of tragedies when published in American newspapers and magazines (or broadcast on TV) are typically from the sanitized category. The reasoning behind that is we don't need to see what happened to know what happened (or less charitably, people prefer human interest stories).
Consider something like a bus bombing. In the US, if a photograph is included it will typically show grief-stricken onlookers, or alternatively, the charred remains of the bus after everything has been cleaned up. Elsewhere, it's not at all uncommon to see multiple photographs showing the blood-spattered carnage in the immediate aftermath.
Granted, the sensibilities of the newsreading public weren't at issue in the case, but still, the ruling does appear to reflect points of view that may not apply elsewhere. And if those views aren't universally held, it stands to reason that decisions related to the publishing of those images (self censorship among them) merit a re-examination. Fragility of life? I think we'd all agree that's an important lesson that needs to be learned. But consider this: the US has been engaged in two wars for years, and I've yet to see anything in the American press that reinforces that lesson, provides evidence of what is really happening, or more generally, reflects the true nature of war.
Is the news coverage of violence and tragedy too sanitized for our own good? If the box office numbers for the "Action-Adventure" genre meant to satisfy the puerile tastes of the movie going public are any indication, I'd suggest it is. How else to explain the attraction and repeated desire to view dramatic re-enactments of something that, according to this judge, is morbid and doesn't deserve to be seen?
My condolences on the loss of your friend. Drive safe and hope for the best. It's the most any of us can do.
What kind of fucktards do they allow into the police force, anyway? Doesn't that give you pause? And isn't that the real issue here? If those cops weren't scum, the case would not have come about. So why allow scum to police people, and how to change it? How would one make the police force (or the military for that matter) a no go area for character dwarfes, while attracting people where, uhm, you don't have to wash your soul after each time you had contact with them, or heard about them in the news? I wonder.
You're wrong. There are no limitations on free speech. Our Constitution is not intended to protect some particular kind of speech, political or other. In fact, it's not designed to protect the free speech of citizens at all.
Our Constitution does not grant citizens free speech, it recognizes our right to free speech as an inalienable right. The point of this document is not to call out specific freedoms that people have, rather it's to grant the government certain powers. If it's not specifically mentioned, rights are presumed to reside with the individual or the state in the US (and state constitutions are similarly framed).
In the case where information is generated by government officials (the police), that information is presumed to be in the public domain except in specific circumstances.
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
These images remind us all of our fragile mortality. ...and many people don't like that.
One that hath name thou can not otter