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."

Comments

News?

[ledow]

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?

Re:News?

[realityimpaired]

Except it's not perjury. :) The juror is accused of violating sequester rules, not of lying under oath.

Re:News?

[ledow]

It is. Nobody's charged him yet.

But are you suggesting that it's illegal to gather evidence by asking a court for a court order to reveal the data of visits recorded to a website?

Evidence-gathering isn't restricted to just what you are freely given. If it was, almost everyone would get away with crimes.

What you're implying is that if I raid a bank, and the court orders the shop across the street to reveal its CCTV records of that day, that's somehow prejudicial to justice?

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I was a juror I had to swear under oath that I would not/did not access outside sources of information about the trial at hand.

Re:News?

[SJHillman]

It's not about his speech act. It has absolutely nothing to do with what he said or where he said it. However, the act of posting may be evidence that he broke other rules/laws unrelated to speech - anonymous or otherwise.

Re:News?

[ArcherB]

Its news as its a bad precident that could easily be abused if allowed to proceed as it is.

I agree criminals should be dealt with, but not at the cost of another's rights.

The Constitution says you have a right to free speech. Nowhere does it say you have a right to anonymous speech.

Re:News?

[lightknight]

And had the site not retained information pertaining to his identity, what would they have done? Nothing.

Re:News?

[cvtan]

"Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A much-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads: Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society." https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I was a juror I had to swear under oath that I would not/did not access outside sources of information about the trial at hand.

Yeah but anyone too dumb to get out of jury duty is not credible.

Re:News?

[History's Coming To]

You can. Set up your own server, hire a few proxies, it's not a huge problem.

Oh...sorry...you meant we should be able to say what we want on somebody else's website and they should never reveal our details...well that's a little different. Tell you what, let's try an experiment, you set up your server and post the details here, then we'll all come along and post what we want, see where that gets you.

Re:News?

[SJHillman]

Yeah, because if I were on trial, I'd want a bunch of morons on the jury. Only idiots brag about getting out of jury duty. The idea is that you approach it as a civic duty and you hope to hell your jury members do too if you're ever on trial.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I had jury duty I could easily have gotten out of it, but chose instead to be a productive citizen and not do so.

Anyone who approaches jury duty with the "I want out of this" attitude should certainly not be sitting on one. They are far less likely to take the responsibility seriously, thus leading to dumb fucking decisions like the Samsung/Apple $1bn judgement.

Re:News?

[polebridge]

I guess if you're ever on trial you'll be judged by a jury of your peers.

Re:News?

[Spent2HrOnAName]

If the government wanted me to treat it as a civic duty and not something to get out of, they would pay me enough to live on. $40/day (in my state at least) for two weeks or more is something to go out of one's way to avoid if you're living paycheck to paycheck.

Re:News?

[mark-t]

The reason, I think, that people "want out of it" is simply because it is too disruptive for them. It's not necessarily that they are unwilling to try to make a contribution to society, but it can amount to a rather significant commitment that can easily leave one unable to simply pick up their lives where they left off afterward, unless they have acquired enough savings to tide them over while their regular income gets disrupted. Even then, dipping into those funds for such a purpose can amount to a tremendous personal sacrifice... and to be frank, why should a person be *expected* to pay possibly quite significant amounts of money out of their own hard-earned wages in order to do something for somebody else? It's not so much about being selfish, but a lot of people are just trying to do everything they can simply to get by and hopefully try to make their lives better in the future. Jury duty can, for many people, take all such hope away.

Re:News?

[SilentStaid]

I'm not sure how it is where you work, but on top of getting an admittedly pitiful sum (Usually $40/day for a Federal Trial) for actually serving as a juror I'm fairly certain most places of work will pay you at least a reduced amount, as well.

Re:News?

[Anonymous Coward]

Minimum wage would be an excellent place to start. It doesn't send a great message when they set minimum wage laws and then can't be bothered to pay even that for one's oh-so sacred civic duty. I'll leave aside for the moment the fact that in many areas, minimum wage isn't enough to live on.
 
  And yeah, I'm sticking with "they." Let's not kid ourselves; you and I are not in charge, and discussions about the nature of self-government are academic when you're missing your rent payments.

Re:News?

[alexander_686]

People get the government they deserve. If you can’t take time out of your life to ensure that we have a civil and just society, don’t expect society to be civil and just.

Oh, and vote next Tuesday.

Re:News?

[Rob the Bold]

Yes, this is a good point. Should jurors be paid at minimum wage? At average per capita? At their current rate? What about child care? What about job guarantees so you don't get fired while you're on jury duty?

"government...they" - you probably meant "government....we"

Not getting fired is covered. Here's the relevant text from the Kansas courts: "(c) State law should prohibit employers from discharging, laying off, denying advancement opportunities to, or otherwise penalizing employees who miss work because of jury service." Looks like other states have similar policies.

The self-employed are kind of screwed, too, in addition to the people you mentioned, since the law wouldn't protect them from losing business because they had to close up shop.

Hardship isn't considered a reason to be excused form jury duty, but being affected by the hardship can be if the worry you're experiencing would make you unable to fulfill your duty to pay attention and be "fair and impartial".

Actual example from my one day of jury duty:

Brain surgeon asks to be excused. He has patients to operate on.

Judge: Having something else to do is not a reason to be excused.

Doc (in standard-issue neurosurgeon bow tie): I have patients scheduled tomorrow!

Judge: No, that's not a reason to be excused, as long as you can be fair and impartial. Your patients' welfare is not the question here. Can you be fair and impartial?

Doc: I would try my best to be. But my patients are scheduled for surgery.

Judge: Could your worry about your patients impair your ability to be a fair and impartial juror?

Doc: I'd try my best.

Judge: But would the anxiety from being in court and not caring for your patients impair your judgement as a juror?

Doc (finally catching on): Yes . . . I would be worried about my patients the entire time, and it could affect my ability to devote myself to jury duty.

So it doesn't take a brain surgeon to get out of serving, but the judge might need to help a little.

Re:News?

[compro01]

It is. Title 28, section 1875 : "No employer shall discharge, threaten to discharge, intimidate, or coerce any permanent employee by reason of such employee’s jury service, or the attendance or scheduled attendance in connection with such service, in any court of the United States"

Bolded is the loophole you can sail the Enterprise through. If you're a contractor or doing a temporary job, your ass is hanging in the breeze.

Re:News?

[drinkypoo]

From what I can tell, statistically nobody getting paid hourly gets paid by their employer for jury duty. It's vanishingly rare. On the other hand, if you're salaried, no problem, they can't fire you. On the gripping hand, that work still has to get done. If you're the only network admin of a smallish internet business or something like that, you probably don't have time for that shit. Most of the time courts are happy to give you a deferment though, and they'll just put you back into the pool and call you again later.

Re:News?

[mattdm]

In Massachusetts, it's the law. http://www.mass.gov/courts/jury/compensa.htm#INFORMATION%20FOR%20EMPLOYERS:%20RIGHTS%20AND%20OBLIGATIONS:

Re:News?

[gander666]

Every jury I have been called for, I was excused from in the voir dire. Apparently, being a physicist, technologist, and having a broad range of knowledge about geopolitical, local, and national issues makes you too smart for one team or the other.

The last one I was in the selection pool for, I was called in on the first day, seated first in the jury box, and survived until the last strike from the defense team. I was the last person that they rejected. Pissed me off because it took 4 days to get to that point.

I have come to the conclusion that one side or the other is always interested in having morons sitting in the box.

Seems reasonable

[Maow]

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?

Re:Seems reasonable

[JaredOfEuropa]

The request is reasonable, but the only reasonable response is: "We're sorry your honour, but we do not require contributors to register under their real name, and we do not record IP addresses of visitors". For sites that respect the privacy of visitors, the best way to ensure that you never have to reveal the identity of your members is to make sure that you don't have that information on file in the first place.

Of course in Europe, all this info is logged by the ISP's anyway, by law.

Re:Seems reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't record IP addresses of visitors, how do you ban people who make abusive comments?

You record a cryptographic hash of the IP address. You don't ban by IP, but by this hash.

Re:Dangrous precident

[Sarten-X]

...so the alternative to giving a public speaker's name to the government is that a juror's name is released to a newspaper?

Now that's a dangerous precedent...