Probable Cause

A friend of mine, Joni Mueller, sent me a link yesterday, asking if I’d seen the article.  The title was “Exclusion of MySpace Evidence in Gang Related [sic] Murder Trial.” The article discusses an evidentiary ruling in the unpublished case of People v. Wiliams (2010) 2010 WL 611444, 2010 Cal.App.Unpub. LEXIS 1251.  [Note: Since there are two versions of the unpublished opinion and since I'm feeling lazy today, I personally will not use citations in discussing the case; the only time citations show up are when I'm quoting the original article using them.]

The article’s focus on the evidentiary ruling is puzzling.

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The other day, I was sitting in a courtroom waiting for a case to be called.  I was stuck.  Having received a call from another attorney, a very good friend who could not make it to the courtroom, I agreed to make a courtesy appearance for her to ask for a continuance.

When I arrived, another case was in progress: an extradition hearing.  I’d never observed or been involved in an extradition hearing.  The person they were trying to extradite, through his lawyer, was making numerous objections to the evidence being admitted.  And, in particular, he was repeatedly objecting that the California Evidence Code — which he believed the court was ignoring — should apply in this extradition hearing.

That’s how it happened that I got myself into a little pickle.

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If it weren’t becoming a daily event, stories like this one would be difficult to believe.

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Governor Schwarzenegger today vetoed, among other anti-crime bills, a bill which would have required corroborating evidence for the testimony of jailhouse snitches.

Has the Governor gone soft on crime?

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Maybe that title is a little too cute.  (I picked it after Kerry Prindiville, a librarian at the Fresno Public Law Library, sent me the link to an article on the use of social networking sites by jury consultants.)  And maybe it’s time for me to move on from writing about MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites.  It’s something of a hot topic, however, and I have some pretty strong feelings about it.

My other articles about this may be found here and here. Those articles have started to attract some attention of their own….

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In my last post, I talked about prosecutors and police using MySpace and Facebook against defendants in criminal cases. A few days after posting that, I received a call from a reporter from LawyersUSA in Boston. He was writing an article on the same subject and wanted to ask me some questions about how lawyers could handle the situation in court.

What I told him was…

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If MySpace and Facebook mean anything, looking like a clown is the new cool.¹ However, if you’ve been charged with a crime, you might want to consider at least temporarily re-vamping the camp: a MySpace makeover could keep you from suffering a stiffer sentence if you are convicted. A Facebook face-lift can make it easier for your lawyer to convince the District Attorney you deserve a break.

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1. In the interest of staying alive, I’ve decided not to post any examples. [↩]