Can a Court Order You To Delete a Facebook Account?

First time accepted submitter jaymz666 writes "Can a court really order you to delete a Facebook account? When Asher initially appeared in court after the July 20 accident, the judge told her to delete her Facebook account, Kittinger said. Asher did not take it seriously, and was charged with contempt of court when the judge learned her Facebook page was still active. Seems like a big overreach."

Comments

Probably

[Shajenko42]

A court can order your execution, I'd imagine they can order the deletion of an online account.

Re:Probably

[ciderbrew]

Civilized people don't have the death penalty.

Re:Probably

[FictionPimp]

They did this to Kevin Mitnick. He was initially forbidden to use any communications technology other than a landline telephone. Mitnick fought this decision in court, eventually winning a ruling in his favor, allowing him to access the Internet.

Seems like a similar type punishment. I bet it won't be hard for a good lawyer to change the ruling as it falls under unusual punishment. You could claim facebook is a requirement for getting a job (which in some fields it is), that it would put a undo burden on you, or even that there is no basis for the punishment and the judge is violating her freedom of speech.

The lady involved in this case is a horrible person, but her rights to let everyone know she's a horrible person should not be infringed.

Re:Probably

[PraiseBob]

Yep, only 45% is part of the gun owning subculture.

Re:Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

The death penalty is very civilized. It saves the tax payer thousands upon thousands of dollars. And frankly, I see it as a release. Given the option of life without parole and death, I will take death over an 8'x6' room. Keeping people in jail for life, now THAT is not civilized.

Re:Probably

[timeOday]

First, your claim is dubious, and second, it's not a defense of the US in particular because any culture would claim exactly the same. Take the middle east. On the one hand we're shocked that Muslims are venting their anger over some nutcase propaganda film against our embassies and the other 99.5% of "westerners" who had nothing to do with it... yet what did I just say? "Muslims are venting." I did NOT say "0.5% of the Muslim fringe is venting," or whatever tiny fraction it is that are actually turning to violence. Can you spot the hypocrisy?

Re:Probably

[bluefoxlucid]

I have seen no data on gun proliferation that indicates that allowing guns into the hands of law-abiding citizens increases murder rates. It does increase death in assaults and home-invasions.

In places like Detroit or Washington DC or Baltimore City where legal gun ownership is basically non-existent, the huge amount of gun proliferation results in an armed criminal element and a disarmed citizenry. This creates a power dynamic whereby criminals have much more control and can be abusive. In truth, a lot of murders seem to be between criminals--they wind up shooting each other in gang turf arguments. They're actually afraid to pull their guns on private citizens, because the gun crime charge is like 10 times worse than the armed robbery charge (you can get 20 years for using a gun as a prop to threaten someone, whereas you may get thrown in jail for 2 years if you rob someone at knife point).

In places like Texas and Florida, murder rate is lower; however 'justifiable homicide' happens more. Basically when someone gets attacked, they shoot back. This means more shootings happen between crazies and less between bullies who think they're malendrine gangster mafioso. The insecure, up-tight morons are a hell of a lot more insecure when people can shoot back; a gunshot draws attention and when everyone in the area has guns and is afraid mostly of being shot but feels like they can shoot you first, they all come looking for you. At least, the theory is strong enough that people believe it and are hesitant to pull out a gun. It's lose-lose: if you don't shoot someone, they might have a gun, and might shoot you (this is fucking hard to do--why would you pull your gun out if the other guy ALREADY has a gun pointed at you?!); if you do shoot them, someone might come looking to see if everyone's alright, and they might find you, and they might have guns.

On top of all that, we have this whole culture thing going on. Look at the death penalty deterrent. In Texas, it's not much of a deterrent because you'll probably be dead before you make it to the court if you're planning on killing someone. In South Dakota, it's not much of a deterrent for unknown reasons. In Wisconsin, also for unknown reasons, when they abolished capital punishment they had murder rates quadrupal in 2 years, and re-instated it to get the murder rates back down.

The same principle applies to gun ownership: local cultural factors will affect how people behave with guns. If they're all insecure hicks who think only of themselves, anything off their property is not their responsibility (no one comes to help you) and anyone on their property needs killin'; if they're more communal, guns simply make people feel empowered and they believe they have a social responsibility, and they use their guns to protect others when other (bad people) bring out their guns to harm innocents. There's a huge gradient between, there's crazy people, people who don't care, people who are paranoid, and people who are just inborn heroes.

I don't think any country can call itself "civilized" when it decides the best way to handle society is to put the common man into a power-disadvantaged lower class. There are bullies and there are victims, and if we make all the common people victims then the bullies get to be kings by abusing people. We should be teaching men and women to fight and to not be afraid, not to cower in fear and leave everyone else to die if they can save themselves from harm. Humans are weak and useless, individual humans have no survival traits; we need to function in groups to live.

Re:Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

Little does the judge know, you can never truly delete your account from there.

Re:Probably

[fredrated]

Don't know much about the topic do you?
In fact, the automatic appeals, lawyer fees etc. involved in attempting to execute someone are well known to cost the state far more than simply keeping the perp in jail for life.

Re:Probably

[gorzek]

The death penalty is not cheaper. It is not a deterrent. There are also way too many cases of people on death row who end up being cleared. How many innocent people have we wound up executing? We'll never know.

Even if you think the death penalty has practical value, though, the state should not be empowered to execute its citizens, period.

Re:Probably

[h4rr4r]

Why is any sexual contact occurring in prison?

Those responsible should be charged with rape and confined in solitary so they cannot harm others. The fact that out prisons are also uncivilized is not a good argument for more barbarism.

Re:Probably

[mcgrew]

violent crimes in the USA are largely committed by certain few subcultures

Do you have the balls to outright name these "subcultures"? The police subculture maybe? Or perhaps Rich people?

Please clear this up, I fear you're making a thinly veiled racist statement about blacks and hispanics, or a classist statement about poor people. Crime doesn't fit any subculture; every culture has honest people, peaceful people, thieves and murderers.

Re:Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/death-penalty/us-death-penalty-facts/death-penalty-cost

for those to lazy to click through here's the juicy:

"Using conservative rough projections, the Commission estimates the annual costs of the present system ($137 million per year), the present system after implementation of the reforms ... ($232.7 million per year) ... and a system which imposes a maximum penalty of lifetime incarceration instead of the death penalty ($11.5 million)."

So, not only are you wrong from a pure economic stand point, the fact you try to justify civility as meaning "cheapest wins" is frankly testimant to how thoroughly uncivilised you are.

If you do find yourself in a 8'x6' room feel free to administer your own desired form of justice FoC, but please stop supporting state sponsored murder on from a moral high-ground.

Re:Probably

[gl4ss]

rape is too easy way to get someone to death row on purpose.
so are a lot of other things.

but civilized people don't have death penalty because for the innocent it's too cruel and for the guilty it's too easy.

Re:Probably

[FictionPimp]

Really, that's the argument you are going to with, a fallacy of accident. It is reasonable to assume that someone who commits a crime is punished and that punishment labels them as a criminal. However, the law has shown that there are limits to punishment if they cause a undo burden on a person. These typically come in the form of unusual or extreme punishments.

For example, it is customary and reasonable to suspend a drivers license for habitual speeders and people with DUIs. But, if that suspension would cost them their livelihoods, it is also typically considered unreasonable to not give them a permit to drive to and from work. This prevents undo burden on the criminal and allows them the chance to actually become a healthy member of society given that they can work within that framework and follow the rule of law.

Likewise it would have been reasonable for the judge to order this lady to not post on facebook content relating to the crime or trial. It is unusual, and creates a undo burden to take away her access entirely and permanently (not to mention unconstitutionally depriving her of her speech) simple because he didn't like what she had to say. Therefore I would argue it is indeed unusual punishment, it puts a burden on her for a crime that is wholly and completely different than almost every other drunk driver (in fact I can't think of another case).

Re:Probably

[interkin3tic]

It's always funny when you tell proponents of the death penalty that it costs a huge amount more. In my experience, they generally suggest cheap ways of killing people. You know, because the logical first assumption would be not lawyer costs but that we were killing prisoners using thousands of diamond swords or something.

Re:Probably

[macbeth66]

hmmm...

This is in response to your statement, not a declaration of my opinion on the death penalty. Slippery bugger, ain't I?

You are right, the death penalty is more expensive. But only becuase of the insane hurdles the anti-penalty crowd have put in place to ensure the rights of the accused are maintained. Good thing we have those insane hurdles, or the more blood-thirsty of us in society would whack off people for every offense. Like bad-mouthing the iPhone

You are incorrect that the death penalty is not a deterrent. Have you ever heard of someone that was put to death, coming back to life and committing another crime?

Re:Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

A deterrent means that the threat of the punishment prevents crime from happening in the first place - not that it prevents recidivism.

Re:Probably

[gorzek]

If we are going to execute someone, should we really not give them full due process of law? Taking a life is the most extreme action available to our justice system. We owe it to ourselves to take every measure possible to ensure the accused is guilty of the crime in question under the circumstances related by the prosecution. This is why we have multiple appeals: so different individuals can take a fresh look at the facts and the trial and any previous appeals and see if anything went wrong.

Even then, we stand a good chance of missing exculpatory evidence. For instance, there are death row convictions based on eyewitness testimony which are later ruled out by DNA evidence. This happens way too often, and it is naive to think we have caught or will catch every instance where an innocent person has gone to death row--just as a matter of statistical probability, we must have executed innocent people. There is no legal process to prove this since there is no victim to redress or petition the court (the victim is dead) so you will never see a court case where an executed individual is exonerated by a court of law.

As the AC said, deterrence and recidivism are separate issues. The death penalty has been demonstrated to, at best, have no effect on murder rates. Some studies have shown it actually increases murder rates.

In any case, this is all beside the point as far as I'm concerned, given that this is a power government should not possess in the first place.

Re:Probably

[queBurro]

where as crushing them to death with only one *really* huge diamond would be much cheaper

Re:Probably

[Java Pimp]

I will take death over an 8'x6' room.

That's the size of my cubicle you insensitive CLOD!

Re:Probably

[gorzek]

"Give me Liberty, or give me Death" was a statement of conviction, of being willing to die for one's beliefs.

An individual being willing to die for their beliefs does not validate the government's power to oblige them.

Re:Probably

[INT_QRK]

Of course, I get it. America bad. Americans stupid. I'm smart! Much better than dumb American. My guess is that you're either a bigoted (from my perspective) foreigner, or a self-rightous American liberal. Either way, up yours.

Re:Probably

[DustyShadow]

Here is one. You can find the others on your own http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DezRubShepDeterFinal.pdf

Re:Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

In Wisconsin, also for unknown reasons, when they abolished capital punishment they had murder rates quadrupal in 2 years, and re-instated it to get the murder rates back down.

Wisconsin abolished the death penalty in 1853, never reinstated it, has only executed a single person in it's history, and has one of the lowest per capita homicide rates in America. So whatever your source is, it's crap.

Re:Probably

[Sectoid_Dev]

In places like Detroit or Washington DC or Baltimore City where legal gun ownership is basically non-existent, the huge amount of gun proliferation results in an armed criminal element and a disarmed citizenry.

I can't speak for the other cities, but there is nothing overly restrictive about the gun owenerships laws in Detroit or the state of Michigan. Open carry is allowed assuming the gun is registered and CCW is legal after taking the course and the background check. The people of Detroit do often keep guns in their house because they know the police are not going to show up in any reasonable amount of time, if at all.

Just because the city is a shit hole, don't assume the reason for that is one that fits your ideological bias.

Re:Probably

[Nadaka]

The death penalty isn't a a deterrent because the class of crimes that it is reserved for are those that are nearly impossible to deter.

The death penalty would make a fantastic shoplifting deterrent. Murder? not so much.

Re:Probably

[richard.cs]

I would like to include rape for the death penalty but the Supreme Court has said no, that's too cruel.

You absolutely should not have the same punishment for rape as for murder. Doing so gives rapists a big incentive to kill their victims: without the victim as a witness they're much less likely to get caught and if the penalty is identical....

This should hold true whether you think the death penalty is a good idea or not.

Re:Probably

[SScorpio]

What do you mean about Detroit and legal gun ownership? Michigan has very liberal conceal carry laws, and I know several professionals who work in Detroit and legally carry concealed pistol just in case.

There were also stories several months ago about some break-ins in Detroit where the home owners shot the intruders. One of these was a guy in his 80s that killed one of the intruders with his shotgun. The media presented him as a hero, and there was no information about any charges against him as he was within Michigan's CASTLE law.

Michigan as well as Detroit have open carry laws, you might be hassled by the police for carry around a shotgun or rifle strapped across your back but I (IANAL) don't believe it's against a law anywhere. To conceal your weapon you need a conceal carry license, and the gun being concealed must be registered to the person with the CC permit. To get a CC you must complete a CC training course and fill out a form and pay a fee.

The only reason the majority of Detroit citizens couldn't own a gun would be if the majority of them are convicted felons. This is also not the case contrary to what you've heard on the news.

Re:Probably

[coolmoose25]

Here's the problem with your logic on capital punishment. I live in Connecticut, which has recently repealed the death penalty. Here is the reality: Before it was repealed, when a heinous crime was committed, the defendant was charged with the capital crime. They would be told by the prosecutor the state would seek the death penalty. In some cases, this was enough to get the defendant to plead to a lower crime, with life in prison without possibility of parole as the agreed punishment. This made sure that the perp never again would terrorize the public. And it was cheaper. In other cases, the state would pursue the death penalty because the crime was so particularly heinous. Google "Cheshire CT Murder" and you'll see the case where two career criminals, with an average of 20 felony convictions each, decided to rape and murder a mother and two teenage daughters because they "liked their car" and followed them home. This crime was so infamous, that even though the state had elected a democrat governor with a democrat legislature, they could not pass the repeal as the political backlash would have been too great. They waited until the next year when the defendants had been sentenced to death before repealing the death penalty for NEW capital crimes.

After it has been repealed, here is what has happened. With the death penalty off the table, the state could only seek life in prison without possibility of parole as it's biggest gun. So defendants now plead out to the lesser crimes with 25 year sentences instead, and are now eligible for parole. As such, there is no really good way of getting someone put away for life without bearing the previous cost of the death penalty cases, with their costly trials and endless appeals. So in reality, the state has saved no money, but now puts murders back on the street at some point. And the biggest irony is that existing death row inmates are now petitioning for their sentences to be reduced to life without parole under the equal treatment clauses under the constitution. This is still outstanding, but it is likely they will prevail. And the two murderers in Cheshire? Well, they are not yet a party to that case, as they are having their cases appealed first. Once that is done, and their appeals are denied, they'll attach themselves to this litigation, and I predict that their sentences will be reduced as well.

The fact of the matter is that none of this will save any money. The fact of the matter is that the old system worked well, since Connecticut never actually executed its death row inmates, except in one case where the murderer essentially committed state suicide by demanding his execution, and even then he had to represent himself, as no lawyer wanted to make that case for him. Other than him, Connecticut hadn't actually killed anyone for decades. But heinous criminals were kept behind bars for life, without the possibility of parole boards, early release programs, etc. releasing these monsters back into society.

But we're all better off now, right? Yeah, I agree. Now lets go gun shopping!

Re:Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

Undue, it's an undue burden.
An undo burden is pressing ctrl+z one too many times and not having a redo option.

Re:Probably

[bluefoxlucid]

No, I have a functional human brain and those are capable of emulating other functional human brains. It's a critical socialization skill, granted my social skills are crap--I'm slow and work with masses and general trends rather than individuals, and I don't lie (though I get a lot of specific data wrong and have to keep learning) and have too much of a conscience.

Interestingly, a large part of human behavior is concealing or altering the truth, including projecting false feelings--the dating scene is impossible, for example, if you're always up-front that you really don't have any serious feelings for one girl over another, but this one seems nice and it's a good chance and you've accepted that you have to close one opportunity to open another and so you're going to date her. Seriously, I've met three girls that I was interested in because, for whatever reason, nobody else would do and I just REALLY wanted that particular girl, and you know even super-studs and plain old normal people have a LOT of misses among the dozen or so girlfriends they have. That behavior is ... incorrect, and rather extreme.

In the same way, a lot of human behavior involves projecting an interest in things you don't half care about; confidence you don't have; and just over-stating your opinions. This is the core of sales and marketing. This is why people talk tough, go through with things they're shaky on but they look like they believe their own moronic bullshit, and then wind up upside down in the air on a motorcycle heading for a mound of dirt and mud like a retard with wings. People want to fit in, want to be accepted, respected, and rewarded. Dating a girl you don't honestly care about but telling her you do is a good way to get sex--doubly so if you're well aware that the relationship is much more temporary than you're saying, because you can play the I-have-a-girlfriend chip on chicks at the bar and nail some floozies. Hanging out with your guy friends drinking shitty beer and watching football is great even if you don't like football, because your guy friends would think you're lame otherwise and "male bonding" is about being the coolest guy in the group. It just goes on.

People think so much about what others think about them. It's pretty much built-in. I'm not saying there aren't crazy people, or even that people aren't over-confident or so insecure that they will do things that should frighten them because they're more afraid of being scared. I'm just saying, you know, the more you think the people around you WILL find you and WILL kill you if you do something, the more terrifying doing that something becomes. If it's just "that guy probably has a gun," you engineer the situation to where he can't use it...maybe just shoot him outright. Nobody else is going to come looking. If it's more "everyone in town is going to have their gun out when they hear the gunshot, they're going to look for people leaving the area, the police will NEVER stop looking for me," and so on, there is no way in hell you're going to commit crimes with a gun--and if you mug someone who has a gun they might SHOOT YOU so maybe you won't do that at all.

Your brain is going to try to figure out how to interact with these people; your goals might be shitty and criminal, but if everyone's behavior just screams "WE WILL FIND YOU AND WE WILL KILL YOU," you're not going to do shit like that. Not unless something is severely wrong with you. Being a "criminal" isn't wrong, strictly speaking; it's viable if you can do it without getting caught and it supports your life in a way that's acceptable. Some of us don't care about plush couches. Some of us aren't even driven much plainly by sex; others are ALWAYS thinking about sex, to a ridiculous degree. Problem comes in when you face something where every indication says what in your life you require to be "comfortable" is destroyed, and you do it anyway--at that point, something is wrong with you.

By the by, method actors make a career out of us

Re:Probably

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

We all know he is talking about Canadians.

As a Canadian. I deeply resent this slur against my people, and plan to politely beat you with a hockey stick until you apologize.

Re:Probably

[shutdown -p now]

According to this [gunpolicy.org], for every 100 people in the states there are 90 guns

This is not a particularly useful metric, because for most people in US, either they have no guns, or they have more than one - and usually more than two. And it's not like owning more guns makes you progressively more likely to use them to hurt or kill someone. Either you have access to a gun and can do it, or you don't and can't. So the metric you really want is the percentage of households with guns.

How about data on the fact that in a country where guns have proliferated (legally or not), there are more gun crimes contrasted with a country in which guns have not proliferated?

How about you try that on some other countries, not just US? For example, Switzerland, where the number of households with guns is higher than US (because of that requirement to keep your service weapon at home), or Czech Republic where concealed carry is legal and widely practiced.

Your problem is that you're picking one differentiator amongs many, find a correlation on a limited set, and then claim that said correlation is causation. It's not. Crime correlates well with the overall poverty of the country, but also with wealth and income disparity. The reason why US has a relatively high crime rate in developed world is not because of guns, but rather because it has unusually high concentration of wealth, very low social mobility, and consequently many poor, disenfranchised people who don't have many prospects in life. This kind of thing breeds crime. Compare that to a well-functioning social democracy like Switzerland, and suddenly guns are a non-factor.

I don't think a country can call itself civilized when it decides that the best way to reduce violent crime is to walk softly and carry a big stick. Why not look at eliminating the root causes of the crime, rather than enabling civilians to shoot criminals?

Why not do both? Self-defense is a human right, so enabling it is a moral imperative regardless of how often it's actually needed in practice.

Re:Probably

[bluefoxlucid]

Not really.

In theory, it's perfectly okay to give guns to so-called "law-abiding citizens." In fact, it's okay to give guns to convicted felons, pederasts, and escaped serial murderers. As long as they're not going to murder anyone else, and just use the weapon as a defensive weapon or a white knighter, we're all better off with them armed and none's the worse except the criminals.

More importantly, in theory you want to keep guns away from people who will use them to commit murder. Murder is defined as an unjustifiable homicide, i.e. a homicide where a rational person wouldn't have determined that lethal force was necessary under those circumstances. It's justifiable if a rational person would determine lethal force is unnecessary as an observer or as a time-distant observer (i.e. hindsight), but where at that point in time the person would have lacked such judgment (for example, while under attack by someone with a knife, by which you could easily disarm them by hand, but at the time there is someone behind you and you fear that you can't evade the blade without it causing fatal harm to another person--but it "should" be blindingly obvious that bringing your arm in and up will easily clear the bystanders. Maybe you shoot this guy in the face instead, because at that exact moment you're just not that awesome).

We can't predict individuals. We can somewhat predict groups and society as a whole. For our purposes, then, we decide that people who have been law-abiding in the past and who do not have anger management issues or a history of violence are probably not going to walk around shooting people with their new toy. We tend to assume that violent convicts aren't trustworthy with weapons. Sometimes the violent con is better than we want to believe and has grown as a person; sometimes the nice person is just a really mean fucker on the inside, or just snaps one day. It's hit and miss. In any case, there is the attempt to get guns out of the hands of the bad ones.

In the end, the numbers that we care about aren't how many people were lawful before guns and became unlawful. The numbers we care about are how many people with guns used them in a lawful, socially acceptable, economically advantageous manner (i.e. the saving of innocent life is positive; the destruction of innocent life is negative; thus economically if we have more people safe and alive now than otherwise, we did it right). All other measurements are a matter of analysis--how many of our expected "law-abiding citizens" turned out as criminals? How many of the actually "law-abiding citizens" performed direct heroic acts? What level of deterrent did an armed citizenry provide? These are interesting numbers. The most interesting, however, is "how many innocent lives should have been lost given predictive trends, and how many were actually lost?" If more were lost than predicted, something is wrong; if fewer were lost, something is better than before.

Your argument is attempting to provide that nobody should have a gun legally because you just can't know that a specific individual won't use it for crime. My argument is that you CAN know that criminals will obtain guns illegally, and you CAN know that a subset of people who have guns will use them for legal purposes of defense of themselves and neighbors, and that arming these citizens is more ideal than not arming them. All other factors are other arguments--such as an armed citizenry being a dangerous climate for violent crime, a deterrent, etc. Criminals tend to move to or develop where crime is easier and less risky; that's great, but even if it weren't true we'd still be at an advantage having a strong, armed non-criminal citizenry.

DUI, collision, no jail time?

[Freddybear]

She got off easy, after a DUI collision she should be in jail for a year or two.

Re:DUI, collision, no jail time?

[SJHillman]

You do realize that for most of the US, the nearest public transportation is several days walk?

You can't delete a Facebook account?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, it wasn't possible to delete a facebook account. You can only deactivate them. I realise it's a technicality, but in a system based upon technicalities, it could serve to be an adequate defence?

Re:You can't delete a Facebook account?

[tnk1]

I presume they would be satisfied with deactivation, or indeed, with her simply not using it. In TFA, it says they threw her in the can because she literally posted "LOL" about her DUI on FB after having been instructed to not use FB and the families of her victims noticed it. Presumably, even its continued existence on the Internet was not a problem as long as she wasn't communicating with it.

Re:You can't delete a Facebook account?

[strength_of_10_men]

Of course you can.

http://www.wikihow.com/Permanently-Delete-a-Facebook-Account

I did it a year ago and have never looked back

Of course, whether or not FB actually deletes your data is another matter.

Taunting

[hawguy]

When you taunt the victims of your drunk driving accident with a flippant post, I am glad a judge can make you take it down, or even your whole FB account if you've shown that you're not responsible enough to use it wisely. If the judge can put you in jail I don't see why it's worse if he tells you to stay off of FB.

Re:Taunting

[hazah]

Except there was no actual taunt. Carelessness at best. And a judge being able to do this to anyone is absolutely horrifying.

Re:Taunting

[FictionPimp]

Because being put in jail for a crime doesn't violate your freedom of speech. Being forced to delete your facebook posts/account does.

If it was facebook who deleted her account, that would be ok with me. It's up to them to decide what kind of speech they want on their servers. But the government has no right to moderate speech unless it is causing a immediate and local danger (fire in a theater). This is the same with the video causing all that trouble in the middle east. Yes, the government could take it down, but doing so violates the core principle of this country.

People look at idiots spewing hate as a bad thing. I look at it as a nice big poster that helps me separate out the idiots from the people worth spending my time with. In any case get a double dose of information. For example, with that anti-muslim video you learn that there are a few people in america who are douche bags and you learn that there are many many more 'muslims' in the middle east who are out of control, immoral, violent, murders just looking for excuses to bring their hate to the rest of the world. In the case of this ladies facebook post, you learn she is immature, immoral, and non-repentant. Basically, she's a horrible person. So if I was ever to meet her, I'd know to stay clear.

Re:Taunting

[pla]

When you taunt the victims of your drunk driving accident with a flippant post, I am glad a judge can make you take it down

You can taunt your victims in person. You can taunt your victims by mail. You can taunt your victims by phone. You can taunt your victims via press conference (if the press considers you important enough to give you an audience). You can taunt your victims with frickin' sky-writing for all it matters.

And yes, you can taunt your victims on Facebook.

The fact that she chose to do it at all makes her an ass, but it doesn't take away her first amendment right to act like an ass.


That said - She may have agreed to delete her account as a condition of a lighter sentence. Personally, I have a problem with games like that in general, but since it happens, and she took the deal, she damned well better hold up her side if she wants to remain on the outside of a cage.

Re:Taunting

[serviscope_minor]

is "My dumb bass got a DUI and I hit a carLOL" even considered taunting?

It taunts grammar nazis like me who don't consider lol to be a punctuation mark.

Re:overreach

[phlinn]

That's not actually true, although the legal system treats it as such. Constitutional means compatible with the US Constitution. Some things flatly aren't, even if the court says otherwise.

Re:Why is she apologizing?

[macbeth66]

It was a condition of her release. If she did not wish to comply with the conditions, her jail time would have been higher and/or she would have had greater fines.

If the judge offers something like this up, you take it. It beats spending more time in jail. But you had better follow through. At this level of the court system, the judges are your neighbors. They want the same things you do, a safe community. They are not ivory tower federal judges.

Condition of release

[ZombieBraintrust]

Sounds like she agreed to get off facebook as part of deal for less jail time. Other deals you might make with the judge. "Less time in exchange for serving in the military", "Less time in exchange for community service", "Less time in exchange for entering into rehab", "Less time with an agreement to avoid certain people"
It is still kinda of awful. Judges should avoid restricting peoples first amendment rights.

Re:overreach

[mooingyak]

That's not actually true, although the legal system treats it as such. Constitutional means compatible with the US Constitution. Some things flatly aren't, even if the court says otherwise.

You don't decide that, the Supreme Court does. Who says the Supreme Court decides that? The Constitution.

Well... not exactly. The Supreme Court says the Supreme Court decides that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison

Re:Why is she apologizing?

[Penguinisto]

I can't disagree with the logic, but something still stinks about how deeply into one's personal life and activities a judge can go.

Hypothetical extreme example: If you met a girl at a bar, went to bed with her, only to discover later (via arrest) that she was jailbait, and a judge demanded that you get a castration in order to avoid 10-15 years in prison, would you do it? Many (I daresay most) would, while others would not.

Thing is, it's not that it gets you out of jail faster - it's that the punishment itself is unusual, which is constitutionally out-of-bounds. In other words, the judge had no constitutional right or authority to order (let alone enforce) such a thing as punishment.

One other bit: I submit that local judges, far more than state/federal ones, are more prone to viciousness, petty abuses, and vindictiveness - especially in more rural areas, where there is no competition and/or chance of losing one's job to a misconduct charge. If there's going to be judicial abuse, odds are good that it'll happen on the lower levels far easier than the upper ones.

Re:Stupid question ..

[jader3rd]

There was no due process here, at least none I saw. Just a judge going, "Take it down."

Having a judge involved, and the defense attorney not objecting, is due process.

I'm a proponent of the Death Penalty

[Firethorn]

You know, I don't think I've ever suggested a 'cheap' way of actually doing the execution? I've suggested nitrogen asphixiation as a method that's painless and doesn't mess the body up, require somebody with medical training(and thus Hippocratic Oath to deal with), or restricted, hard to obtain chemicals. You just need a reasonably airtight room and some tanks of nitrogen(available from the local welding supply).

I've mostly suggested streamlining the appeals process, eliminating some of the duplication of effort, and restricting the death penalty to the 'worst offenders'. We're not just talking 1st degree murder. My general standard is '3 or more killed, or deliberate torture in addition to the murder'. You don't try to sentence a 60 year old doctor who killed his wife by poison after catching her cheating to death. You go for the under 25 year old gangbanger 'executioner' who killed 6 people with his bare hands with that sentence. The second isn't containable in a minimum security prison, the first is.

Plus, one thing to realize is that prison costs can vary wildly. A Life in prison without possible parole sentence is the normal replacement for death, but those who receive it are often not 'average' convicts. You might be able to warehouse them cheaper than maintaining them on a death row, but I will call 'foul' when anti-DP groups cite costs and use average incarceration figures, incuding minimum security prisons*, when most of those being convicted of murder are going straight for max, which costs 3-10 times as much as minimum. Even then, you have the problem that when they hit 60 and start needing medical care provided by the prison system... In the end, I conclude that any savings are 'it depends on the specific case', and shouldn't really be considered that much. The decision should be on the basis of 'the dudes just that dangerous', or 'what they did was just that wrong'.

*Though I'll admit that not all do.

Pro death == pro stupid

[TiggertheMad]

I've mostly suggested streamlining the appeals process, eliminating some of the duplication of effort, and restricting the death penalty to the 'worst offenders'. We're not just talking 1st degree murder. My general standard is '3 or more killed, or deliberate torture in addition to the murder'. You don't try to sentence a 60 year old doctor who killed his wife by poison after catching her cheating to death. You go for the under 25 year old gangbanger 'executioner' who killed 6 people with his bare hands with that sentence. The second isn't containable in a minimum security prison, the first is.

The reason the death penalty is flat out wrong is quite simple. It isn't just that you are being hypocritical about the morality of killing, it is also that you are murdering innocent people.

In any group of convicted murderers, there are going to be some people who are innocent. That's just a fact. People (juries) make mistakes. So some number of people you put to death are going to be innocent. It might be one in a hundred or one in ten thousand, but they are going to be there regardless of your degree of diligence. And when 15 years later, when new evidence comes to light as it seems to with alarmingly frequency, you can't just let them out of jail with an apology.

Whenever I talk to pro-death penalty people, I ask them if they would still support the death penalty if they or one of their loved ones was one of those one in a thousand cases where an innocent person was wrongly convicted, I have yet to hear a convincing 'yes'. Are you so strong in your belief of the value of capitol punishment that you would be willing to die to support it? Would you stand outside the prison when your child was executed with a sign that says, 'Fry the bastard', when you knew they were only guilty of not having a good alibi and a good lawyer?

Re:Pro death == pro stupid

[shutdown -p now]

Thousand times this.

Personally, I am a proponent of death penalty in a sense that I see it as a moral and fitting punishment for certain crimes (e.g. multiple counts of premeditated murder or rape, or torture killing). However, the possibility that an innocent person might be executed makes it completely non-viable to me.

Interestingly enough, Jews had that same argument ages ago regarding the various applications of death penalty prescribed in Torah (for adultery, murder etc). And, millennia ago, they have arrived to the same conclusion: it's far more damning to execute an innocent person than it is to let the criminal walk. And so unless there is absolute, unwavering certainty that a given person is guilty - and no-one can be absolutely certain in that, since even our own senses can betray us sometimes - the only moral choice is to completely abstain from the practice.

Re:Pro death == pro stupid

[nospam007]

" Mostly we just see circumstantial stories about somebodies innocence."

There are 140 of them.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

California could save $1 billion over five years by replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment.
California taxpayers pay $90,000 _more_ per death row prisoner each year than on prisoners in regular confinement.
http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42

Re:Pro death == pro stupid

[Asic Eng]

I have never seen a good study of the actual proved innocent after death penalty administered, but I imagine the numbers will be very low.

The Colombia University Law School has done a study, which suggests the error rates are high: http://www2.law.columbia.edu/instructionalservices/liebman/liebman_final.pdf

Re:Pro death == pro stupid

[hey!]

but I imagine the numbers will be very low.

On what basis to do you imagine that? Why is it that in this country, where we assume the government can't do anything right, somehow we assume it is near *perfect* when it comes to condemning people to death?

If it turned out to be one in a hundred, then we would need to take a serious look at the processes involved. However, I have no problem with an error rate of one in ten thousand death penalty convictions being wrong.

Alright, how did you decide that 1/100 is unacceptable, but 1/10000 is? Do you have a rational basis for where you draw the line, or are you going by your gut feeling? If you are going by your gut feeling, what makes you think that's a reasonable basis for deciding to execute somebody?

There are two common styles of ethical reasoning you can use to approach a question like this.There is utilitarian reasoning, which maximizes the public good. At least under utilitarian reasoning at least you *could* come up with a conclusion that 1/100 errors is unacceptable but 1/10000 is, but you'd have to have to identify some approximately measurable good which you can set against the costs of executing an innocent man. You can't appeal to "justice", because that belongs to a *different* style of ethical reasoning: deontological ethics, which deals in rights and obligations. In that case it doesn't matter of the innocent defendant is 1/100 or 1/10000, his rights cannot be violated unless you can show that *not* executing him violates somebody else's superior right.

In either case your feeling good or bad, satisfied or dissatisfied about executions has no bearing on the morality of capital punishment.

This little strawman is always a fun one. Let me turn it around on you. If I knew for a fact that my child committed a crime that merited the death penalty, heck, even if I am the one who turned him in, I still wouldn't stand outside the prison with a sign that says, 'Fry the bastard.'

I'll go out on a limb here and guess you don't actually have any children.

Re:Pro death == pro stupid

[Obfuscant]

... it is also that you are murdering innocent people.

The person being executed is the one who has murdered innocent people. I know, you are referring to the state with your comment. However, the definitions say otherwise. "Law . the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law." Since by definition it isn't murder, then your claim is inflammatory. Killing, yes, murder, no. But this inflammatory use of terminology is a minor point that can be ignored once we understand you are doing it purposefully.

In any group of convicted murderers, there are going to be some people who are innocent.

Also wrong, under current jurisprudence. "Considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law." Now, this point does have some merit, in that you are assuming that all people found guilty of murder in a court of law would be executed and there may be some mistakes in some cases. However, the person you are replying to has already made execution depend on the circumstances of the murder, and "amount of physical evidence" and "statements of the accused" would most certainly be part of the conditions.

In other words, you are arguing against all death penalty uses based on current usage, and the OP is arguing for it based on a different usage with stricter limits. "You can't do it at all because sometimes you do it wrong" is not a valid argument; "sometimes we do it wrong, so let's fix the errors" is.

Whenever I talk to pro-death penalty people, I ask them if they would still support the death penalty if they or one of their loved ones was one of those one in a thousand cases where an innocent person was wrongly convicted,

If one of my "loved ones" had been found guilty of murdering half a dozen people based on irrefutable physical evidence, had admitted to doing so, and showed zero remorse, I would probably still have an emotional hesitancy to execution, but the law is not emotional nor is it supposed to be. "Don't execute him because I love him" is a bit lacking in sufficiency when there were probably people who loved the half a dozen people he killed, too.

And the short answer to your question would be "yes". I would still support the death penalty in general.

Would you stand outside the prison when your child was executed with a sign that says, 'Fry the bastard',

Of course not, and that's a stupid and insulting question. You can support the death penalty without having to stand outside any prision with any sign. I've never held such a sign, for example. Are you saying you question my honesty because I have not?

when you knew they were only guilty of not having a good alibi and a good lawyer?

When that was the sole basis of the conviction, then the conditions that the OP to whom you replied would not be met, and the person would not be sentenced to death.