Texas Admonishes Judge For Posting Facebook Updates About Her Trials

An anonymous reader writes: Michelle Slaughter, a Galveston County judge, says she will appeal a public admonition from state officials that criticized her Facebook posts about cases brought before her court. From the article: "The State Commission on Judicial Conduct ordered Michelle Slaughter, a Galveston County judge, to enroll in a four-hour class on the 'proper and ethical use of social media by judges.' The panel concluded that the judge's posts cast 'reasonable doubt' on her impartiality. At the beginning of a high-profile trial last year in which a father was accused of keeping his nine-year-old son in a six-foot by eight-foot wooden box, the judge instructed jurors not to discuss the case against defendant David Wieseckel with anyone. 'Again, this is by any means of communication. So no texting, e-mailing, talking person to person or on the phone or on Facebook. Any of that is absolutely forbidden,' the judge told jurors. But Slaughter didn't take her own advice, leading to her removal from the case and a mistrial. The defendant eventually was acquitted of unlawful-restraint-of-a-child charges."

Comments

Texas Judges

[Alsee]

Michelle Slaughter
Earl Gallows
Trigger Winchester
Otis Hangem
Billy Bob Guilty

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In-depth political analysis

[stephanruby]

I wish to subscribe to her twitter feed.

I bet that maintaining a Twitter and Facebook presence will help with her re-election campaign.

Also, she's not bad looking as far as judges go. In American politics, good looks count for a lot.

Meanwhile, Slaughter emerged on top from a field of four Republicans, which includes Mallia, but she too did not earn the more than 50 percent vote to win her respective race.
Slaughter accumulated 10,015 votes while Mallia finished the race with 7,654.
Mallia was first elected as a Democrat in 2000, but switched to the GOP in November.
Their rivals, Zachary Maloney and Paul Lavalle, combined for approximately 12 percent of the vote.

Slaughter is actually the perfect name for a judge in Texas. I bet she got 3,000 votes for her last name alone.

And Maloney sounds too much like baloney, that poor guy was doomed from the start. Why did he even run? I have no idea.

Guilty of violating the laws of physics

[enigma32]

Is anyone else curious how the guy fit his [presumably 3-dimensional] son into a two-dimensional (6'x8') "box"?

Reason for not talking to people

[BitZtream]

The summary (didn't bother to read the article) doesn't understand the point of not letting jurors talk about the trial to others. Its not so they don't give out trial details to the public, its so the public doesn't give them things from outside the court.

The judge ISN'T BOUND by that and is in fact REQUIRED BY LAW to hear things first (when requested by attorneys) to verify if its even okay for the jury to hear it. The judge posting on Facebook is not a problem for the trial itself, its just unprofessional, trials are public you know, unless deemed otherwise by the judge.

Telling the jurors not to talk to others about the case doesn't make it a private case, its just normal to not have the jurors getting data from other places.

The mistrial was for entirely different reasons if anyone bothered to know anything about the actual trial.

Re:News about a dumb, selfish bitch. Prob a slut t

[TWX]

I've always found the use of "slut" in the pejorative to be a curious thing. Don't most single men want a woman that will have sex with them without a whole lot effort and without having to have something as burdensome as a relationship with them in order to get it?