Your Online Presence
Social networks are the talk of the town these days, especially among the millennial generation. Millions upon millions of people have pages on popular social networking platforms such as MySpace and Facebook, displaying all aspects of their personal life such as vital statistics and any photos they may have uploaded into the system. Now, some people are finding that information coming back to haunt them in court. Several cases have been documented in which photos from a defendant’s social networking page were used against their case to paint them in a bad light.
20-year-old Joshua Lipton was charged with drunk driving, and the ensuing accident that left a woman seriously injured. Two weeks after the accident, Josh was photographed at a Halloween party dressed in a black and white striped shirt and orange jumpsuit marked “Jail Bird”. When a friend uploaded the photos to their social networking page, prosecutors in Josh’s case found the photos and used them to their advantage.
[Prosecutor Jay] Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.
The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrass defendants but also can make it harder for them to convince a judge that they’re remorseful or that their drunken behavior was an aberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defense lawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of a star prosecution witness.)
The photos from Mr. Lipton’s case were made into a powerpoint presentation and shown in court as evidence against his character. Many people forget that it is not just their friends who are searching for and viewing their social network profiles online, and that anyone has access to that information. Kevin Bristow, Mr. Lipton’s attorney, summed the point up nicely when he stated, "If it shows up under your name you own it, and you better understand that people look for that stuff."
