Watch out what you say online: it could be used against you in court. As briefly reported by Eric Goldman, an appellate court in California just upheld a vehicular manslaughter conviction based on the defendant’s MySpace post that bragged “I have a really bad habit of racing random people.”
In 2006, Henry Chavez died in a high-speed crash on Highway 101 in Oxnard, California (just up the coast from Los Angeles). Witnesses testified that two Mustang drivers had been racing with each other around 10:30 a.m. According to witnesses, both Mustangs were weaving through freeway traffic at 100 to 115 miles per hour. At 10:32 a.m., Chavez lost control of his car as he tried to change lanes. His car struck the center guardrail, skidded across the road, struck a car on an on-ramp, then flew off the ramp and rolled into a strawberry field. Chavez was killed. The other driver did not stop.
Eventually the police found the woman who had been seen driving her Mustang alongside Chavez that morning and charged her with manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident. At trial, she admitted that she had been driving her Mustang on the 101 at the same time. But the woman claimed that she was an innocent bystander who had just been trying to get out of Chavez’s way.
The prosecutor introduced testimony by people who had seen the woman racing. But the prosecutor’s most powerful evidence came from the defendant herself. The day before the accident, the defendant had posted a message on her MySpace profile: “If you find me on the freeway and you can keep up I have a really bad habit of racing random people.”
The jury believed the MySpace post and convicted the driver of vehicular manslaughter and felony hit-and-run. The judge later sentenced the driver to one year in prison. A California appellate court just upheld the conviction (PDF) based on the MySpace post.
The lesson is clear: prosecutors are willing to use evidence from social networking sites as proof in criminal cases, and courts are willing to admit it. This woman’s boastful post about her love of street racing came back to haunt her in court, and may have cost her a year behind bars. Whether it is fair or not, the reality is that prosecutors and police know to check social networking sites for evidence of crimes and for statements that can be used against the defendant.
Think about it: What do you have on your profile that could be used against you? Could anything you say be taken out of context? Would your privacy settings allow anybody to see it without a subpoena?
This is more than just the story about a looter who smiled for the cameras as he ripped off a gas station. It’s also a story about the modern surveillance state: Forget the all-seeing “Big Brother” of 1984 fame. It turns out that crime doesn’t pay in an era of 300 million Little Brothers either.
- Photos posted on Flickr.com allowed the LAPD to make an arrest
The story of this smiling crook is pretty simple: There was a celebration in the streets of Los Angeles after the LA Lakers won the NBA Championship this spring. The atmosphere was mostly peaceful, but a few fans got carried away and took advantage of the party in order to carry out a bit of looting and rioting. The LAPD arrested around 17 people at the scene, but was unable to catch many of the looters who stole food and soda from a Shell gas station downtown.
A fellow fan caught a few photos of the mob scene on his digital camera. Several of these photos showed a looter running from the gas station to a car with two cases of soda (and an ear-to-ear smile).
Unsurprisingly, the photographer put the photos online. Tens of thousands of photos like this one go on sites like Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace every day. The photographer didn’t mean to help law enforcement out by putting the photos online; he just wanted to share his experience one night in the City of Angels.
The LAPD, on the other hand, were quite happy to have a treasure trove of public images and video of the rioting and disorder downtown. The police found the photos on Flickr, probably just by searching for “LA riots” and filtering out the photos from all the other riots in LA. From these publicly-visible photos, they were able to find photos that showed tens of people caught red-handed. In this case, the alleged looter was photographed standing next to a car (with its rear license plate visible) and getting ready to load his ill-gotten soda into its trunk. The police could have easily just run the plates on the car and found either the looter or somebody near him. From there, it was a simple matter to identify and arrest the “Flickr Lootr” at his job (ironically enough, as a guard at a hospital).
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There has been another sighting of Reputation.com “I googled you ” shirts, this time at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles:
- Another Reputation.com “I googled you” t-shirt, this time in LA.
In other news, I’m happy to be joining the Reputation.com team as General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer. I look forward to the opportunity to help everyday people take control of their online image, take back their privacy, and protect their reputations. And, of course, the company is filled with amazing people with whom I am lucky to work.
I look forward to posting occasional news updates to this blog, as well as some commentary about online privacy and legal issues. Stay tuned!
– Dave Thompson
