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Judge To Newspaper - Reveal Name of Commenter
First time accepted submitter Andy Prough writes "A Kansas judge has ordered a Topeka newspaper to release the name of a commenter on one of its stories about the trial of Anceo D. Stovall for the murder of Natalie Gibson. Using the name 'BePrepared,' the commenter posted the following in response to a story about the ongoing trial on July 21 at 1:45pm: 'Trust me that's all they got in their little world, as you know, I have been there. Remember the pukes names they will do it for ever.' The problem? The court is convinced that 'BePrepared' was a juror, and was not supposed to be accessing news about the trial before it ended on July 24th. The court wants BePrepared's name, address and IP address. The jury was ultimately unable to find Stovall guilty of 10 of the 11 charges against him — including murder. Both defense and prosecution lawyers appear to want a new trial, and if it turns out that BePrepared was a juror, they are more likely to get their wish."
News why?
- Juror suspected of perjury.
- Court issues order to place that published posts which have a reasonable chance of providing evidence of said perjury, to provide the bare minimum of information to identify the poster.
- If it's not him, end of case.
- If it is him, file for mistrial, pursue conviction against him.
Why is this news? This is bog-standard legal procedure for any medium whatsoever (e.g. newspaper letters page would be the same, or CCTV of him in a pub meeting the defendant, or whatever).
Because "The Internet" means you should be anonymous, untraceable and able to commit criminal acts? Is that the logic?
I don't really have a problem if they're investigating whether a juror made the posting.
Assuming that, if the poster was not a juror, they will retain their anonymity.
The "release the name" isn't "print it in the newspaper", it's released to the court, which won't release it further... will it?
What should happen at the most is that the name is given to the newspaper, and they verify if its them or not. I dont think they should just give out the name of some random person exersizing their rights.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'll assume and hope that the paper does not have the person's real name. This can only lead to fishing expeditions on other issues where the authorities will demand that people identify themselves. These kinds of demands must be resisted, or there will be to pay down the line.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
How does anybody read that gibberish and come to the conclusion that the commentor is a juror? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense?
They don't need the name of the person, they need to know that it is NOT ______________. You shouldn't reveal all the cards, but rather reveal that it is not 4 aces.
He done did it he did!
Both defense and prosecution lawyers appear to want a new trial,
Can someone clued into the legal situation here fill me in on why they can't just get a new trial if both sides wants one?
What about that particular post made the court "convinced" it was a juror?
During a trial the judge can declare a mistrial or take action against the juror for violating the rules, but if the defendant was found innocent of those 10 charges, then it's too late to change, as that would be double jeopardy.
Did anyone notice Jonathan B. Phelps is the attorney in the case? Phelps Chartered had a web site (http://www.phelpschartered.com/) but it is offline at the moment.
So this guy supposedly accessed a story WHILE the jury was in deliberations? One would think, that were this person on the Jury, one of the other jurors would have witnessed this?
Nothing about the comment even hints that a juror or someone with knwoledge of the specific case said it. This seems like grasping at straws to me.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Give the judge the first name and last octet of the user's IP address. If any of those match, then turn over the other octets (one at a time) and if they all match, give them the name and address of that one person.
I've only been a juror on one trial, but my impression was that the judge was accepting rather lame excuses from people who wanted to get out. Perhaps he felt the same way you do.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
A suspicion that you are being followed does not legally justify violently assaulting your alleged pursuer.
Sincerely,
A Lawyer
So do we think the jury is a good idea or not? Do we believe in the wisdom of our peers or not? Why must the jurors be sequestered?
Or should we sequester congressmen as well? Maybe we should sequester the president so he doesn't base his decisions on uncontrolled influence.
Personally, I would dispense with the juries and use professional, nominated judges instead. I would never trust my case on a jury.
So is this an issue of a juror posting a comment to the local paper? Or a juror reading the news in that (or other) papers concerning this trial? because if its the latter, there could be numerous jurors who read it but didn't submit a comment.
If our system depends on jurors keeping themselves ignorant of current events rather than being able to ignore information from outside sources, we're screwed.
Have gnu, will travel.
Excellent. So now our court system has revealed it's own crazy paranoia about internet posts. Some guy posts an offhanded comment that literally could have been made by anyone, but has a vague implication it was made by a juror.
So here's the attack:
1. Find newspaper article about local trial while trial is going on.
2. Post a reply in the forum implying you're a juror in the trial.
3. Goto 1.
The idea that the person was a juror was vague and only implied. There wasn't even any information revealed only at the trial. So that's seriously all that's required for the court system to fire up the crazy machine? If that's the case, one bored person with tor and some spare time could sure reek havoc on our court system.
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I notice that the courts phrasing is "should prohibit" rather than "does prohibit" or "prohibits". This could simply be poorly worded, but considering that the court's main business is to parse the specific wording of laws, I would be a little worried that the court's text merely implies that it would be nice if there were to be a law passed that would prohibit such a thing and that passing such a law should happen.
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If such a law already existed, I'd bet the phrasing would be "State law prohibits" with a reference to or citation of the relevant law. Maybe a lawyer (IANAL) could jump in and comment. Double-bonus points if it's a Kansas lawyer who might even really know. :)
who cares about their rights?
What rights? The last two governments have taken the rights out of the Bill of Rights, leaving us with just the bill.
If there are enough jurors who don't mind serving, the judge will dismiss those who express the desire to not serve. But if everyone wanted off the case (say it was promising to be a lengthy civil suit that would have kept you all in the courtroom for two months,) he probably wouldn't have let them go so easily.
John
why ask the paper, when he can just ask /b/ ?
/b/'s not the judge's personal army...
inb4
The problem for many would be compensation. I'd be happy to be on a jury if I could be financially compensated in a way that adequately covers my absence from work. A few days I could handle, but if I somehow got stuck on a "big case" that ran for months it would be a significant financial hardship.
Doing your civic duty is a good thing, but doing so and not being able to pay your bills isn't so much. It's not good for those on the jury, and it's not good for the accused as a bunch of disgruntled and financially hurting jurors are more likely to make snap decisions based on their desire to get out of the box.
most news websites do require all the commentators personal data, and some of them actually have information-verification tricks.
It is restriction of free-speech, because sometimes, even if the person wants to keep their privacy rights, they feel that the weight of their comment outweighs their hesitance to click the "consent" button. In matters of FREE SPEECH and FREEDOM OF INFORMATION, someones comment has more value to the public then some crooked IT swindlers who build data-grabbers into the code, and have the intent to abuse the commentators data, when it goes against the publishers agenda.
In NO situation should someone hesitate in exercising their freedom of speech, and if data-entry fields hinder someone in their rights, thats similar to coersion to consent (depending on the weight of the speech)
Even destroy the data so even you dont know who it was.
. . . and lack of punctuation.
A federal judge in San Diego dismissed a juror who kept reading blog coverage in a major criminal securities fraud case in 2007, and prevented the prosecution from presenting five witnesses who also had been reading blog coverage about the trial. The judge reminded jurors not to read newspapers or anything else about the case at the end of each day of trial. The juror denied he was reading the blog after fellow jurors informed the court he had commented about the blog to them. The judge let it go, but then dismissed him a couple weeks later after he continued to make comments to them.
http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070627/news_1b27prgn.html