Bitten In Court By Belligerent Messages?

[Matt VDW]

Does anyone know of a court case (civil or criminal) in which a message or messages from an online forum were used as evidence against someone? I know that it COULD happen, but has it?

Sometimes I see messages that look almost tailor-made for a prosecutor or plaintiff's attorney. Someone will say something along the lines of "If some dirtbag messes with me, I'm going to shoot him, then shoot him a couple more times to make sure he's dead". That's the sort of statement that a lawyer would love to quote to a jury to establish that Mr. Gunowner was an angry, hateful man who was just itching for an opportunity to kill someone, and so it's clear that his use of deadly force against the late Mr. Perpetrator was not a last resort, but a pre-meditated act of malice.

Then again, I wonder how feasible it would be to search all of cyber-space for juicy comments to use against someone.

Has it happened?

 

[DC]

Not along the lines that you are referring to.
There have been sex related/pedophilia/stalking prosecutions. Just last week some people in England were nailed for kiddie porn. And I think there have been some related to terrorism. But, these above were also discovered by looking at the Internet, not after the fact.

In your example, it would be pretty hard to uncover evidence. Say you shot an intruder. Your computer would have to be seized under warrant, then checked, leads followed then researched to determine participation and content, etc in forums/chatrooms/bbs of relevance. Then determine if the "loudmouth" in question was indeed you. Then warrants have to be issued to get log records of your ISP and of the forums. That would take lots of time and money.

And, unless you made a direct to kill Joe Blow, its only circumstantial that doesn't go to cause.

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!



[This message has been edited by DC (edited December 14, 1999).]

 

[Matt VDW]

That's good to know. Considering how many thousands of messages I've posted here and there over the years, there must be enough material for someone to cut and paste together all sorts of incriminating "quotes". And I try to behave myself!