{"id":703,"date":"2012-03-01T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2012-03-01T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/?p=703"},"modified":"2012-03-01T12:00:19","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T12:00:19","slug":"the-tweeted-tale-of-tot-mom-trial-by-twitter-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/2012\/03\/01\/the-tweeted-tale-of-tot-mom-trial-by-twitter-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tweeted Tale of Tot Mom: Trial by Twitter"},"content":{"rendered":" \n\n
\"Mug<\/a>
A mug shot of Casey Anthony<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\nIn the summer of 2011, Casey Anthony, a young, attractive mother was accused of<\/a> taking part in the disappearance and subsequent death of her darling baby girl, Caylee Marie. Thousands followed the trial; when the verdict came out, minutes later there were 352,283 reactions<\/a> on Twitter<\/a>. One of the defense team\u2019s members stated<\/a>, \u201csocial media was the difference between winning and losing.\u201d\n\nAlthough the prosecution ultimately put forth a weak case<\/a>, the nation\u2019s resounding digital fury at the verdict raises a number of legal concerns. One is the delicate balancing act<\/a> affected by the rise of social media: how to properly view a defendant\u2019s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial in light of the public\u2019s equal First Amendment right to a public trial. The case against Casey is an ideal window from which to examine the dilemma: Casey\u2019s trial was met with unprecedented social media attention in a state with an unprecedented statutory right to public access<\/a> for all court documents, including discovery records.\n\nIn Florida, the Public Records laws allowed for the release of more than 25,000 pages of public documents<\/a>, including depositions of witnesses, forensic documents and scans, bank statements, emails with friends, family, and acquaintances, and photographs of Casey drinking alcohol and photos of Casey posing with her little girl. This provided an arsenal for the media<\/a> and spawned news stories as far out as New Zealand and the United Kingdom<\/a>.\n\nFor Casey Anthony, Twitter became a treasure trove of information. During the trial, updates were tracked<\/a> and followed by thousands of users anxious to voice their opinions on the goings of the courtroom. When various witnesses would take the stand<\/a>, the public would link their reactions directly to Twitter feeds. Even the Court itself took to Twitter: NinthCircuitFL<\/a> continued to provide real-time updates on Casey Anthony\u2019s post-trial hearings and related affairs months after the trial.\n\nThe defense team saw an opportunity: they hired Amy Singer, a trial consultant<\/a> who based her work on the media\u2019s accessibility. Singer gauged the public\u2019s reaction to various stages of the trial by monitoring 40,000 highly charged opinions on social media sites and used this information to help the defense team adjust their strategy. What the public did not like, the jurors, as members of that public, would not like either.\n\nTo be effective, a state\u2019s criminal process must<\/a> \u201csatisfy the appearance of justice.\u201d Often, allowing public access<\/a> to the process through the use of technology and open records laws may seem to achieve this purpose. However, even the Supreme Court has expressed doubt with the purely positive effect of technology. Efforts must be made to avoid<\/a> a \u201cmistrial in 140 characters or less.\u201d In Florida, the public has greater access to court documents than anywhere else in America; thus, Florida should be the first to consider the implications of Twitter\u2019s facilitation of access to these documents.\n\nAccording to author Paul Lambert<\/a>, with increasing access and publication of these documents, \u201cthe advent of social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook pose new threats with jurors breaching their obligations and the impartiality and fairness of the justice system.\u201d The time has come to address Twitter\u2019s implications for a defendant on trial.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mimi Zhuravitsky explores the role of social media in the 2011 courtroom spectacle\u2014the Casey Anthony trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[268,420,665,1403,1573],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-blogs","tag-casey-anthony","tag-criminal-law","tag-florida","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}