From Social Media to the Court Room--Class Work

Brief Summary:
The use of social media sites within the court room has been a growing figure the last 10 years.  The first part of this article depicts how hard it is for court rooms to narrow down evidence with online data.  The use of images and videos may not always be taken as concrete evidence within the court room do to the advances in producing "life like" digital files.  The use of different digital programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe AfterEffects is creating interference with the court room because it asks the question, "is this really what happened? Or did somebody edit this and put what they wanted into it?"  The next section of the reading describes to the user how lawyers are affected by taking social media evidence to the court room.  The lawyers duty of candor is a primary issue within many court cases dealing with social media information.  Whether the lawyer is being 100% truthful with the information he/she has gathered, and whether he/she is representing the case honestly is proving to be a larger issue within todays court hearings.  Though this seems like a "no brainer" and that lawyers are always truthful with their cases, in many cases they are unaware of the situation that they are in and are mislead by a client dealing with social media evidence.

Notable Points:
-Information pulled from social media sites is not always considered good evidence.
        -Can be altered in programs and therefore not eligible for court.
-People vs. Beckley
        -Girl putting up gang sign with a quote considered to be from a gang on social media.
        -Brought up in court as evidence.
        -Not concrete evidence so couldn't be used.

Relation to Law Topics Issues such as the ability to alter images and the ability to quote sources that many think shouldn't be allowed on social media sites will continue to be a problem within todays court system.  The main issue that court cases will run into is whether whatever is being taken to court was "literal in meaning" or "used in that way".  The interpretation over a users information on their social media site will be hard to fight due to not being able to ever know the exact reasoning behind it without having to go to the source who wrote it.  Because we cannot know for sure they exact and literal meaning behind something found on social media sites (such as images or tweets), lawyers will continue to have a hard time building evidence off of information found on a social media platform.

Discussion Question:
1.) How can we determine the literal meaning behind information pulled from social media platforms against the client who wrote it?

2.) Does the court have the right to bypass the security and rights of an individual on a social media site who is being prosecuted in court?


source:
http://apps.calbar.ca.gov/mcleselfstudy/mcle_home.aspx?testID=61