Bartholomew Roberts
Moderator
http://www.abajournal.com/news/ind._high_court_allows_myspace_entry_as_evidence_in_murder_trial
A brief but good article here for some of our members who don't realize how public of a forum TFL is. The person in question took the stand in his own defense and opened himself up to rebutting character evidence (from his MySpace page).
Not only were the prosecutors able to find the evidence with ease and were well aware of it. The defendant continued to boast and make comments about the case after he was initially charged and those comments were used against him as well.
Note that there wasn't really anything controversial about the ruling. Everyone agreed that it was a clear case of simply applying the old rules to a new form of communication. In this case, the defendant was a guy who deserves to be in prison (he was convicted of the beating murder of his girlfriend's 2yr old daughter... his defense was that it was reckless homicide - he then boasted that "It's only a C felony. I can beat this." afterwards)
However, it is worth remembering that the same rules apply to good guys who get crossways with the law as well. The defendant here made his character an issue by taking the stand in his own defense and that allowed the prosecutor to bring his Internet statements into evidence.
A brief but good article here for some of our members who don't realize how public of a forum TFL is. The person in question took the stand in his own defense and opened himself up to rebutting character evidence (from his MySpace page).
Not only were the prosecutors able to find the evidence with ease and were well aware of it. The defendant continued to boast and make comments about the case after he was initially charged and those comments were used against him as well.
Note that there wasn't really anything controversial about the ruling. Everyone agreed that it was a clear case of simply applying the old rules to a new form of communication. In this case, the defendant was a guy who deserves to be in prison (he was convicted of the beating murder of his girlfriend's 2yr old daughter... his defense was that it was reckless homicide - he then boasted that "It's only a C felony. I can beat this." afterwards)
However, it is worth remembering that the same rules apply to good guys who get crossways with the law as well. The defendant here made his character an issue by taking the stand in his own defense and that allowed the prosecutor to bring his Internet statements into evidence.