Facebook Photos Send Unrepentant Partier to Prison

Tag : Striped Shirt

"Social networking sites are just another way that people saythings or do things that come back and haunt them," said PhilMalone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School'sBerkman Center for Internet & Society. "The things that peoplesay online or leave online are pretty permanent."
The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrassdefendants but also can make it harder for them to convince a judgethat they're remorseful or that their drunken behavior was anaberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defenselawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of astar prosecution witness.)
Prosecutors do not appear to be scouring networking sites whilepreparing for every sentencing, even though telling photos ofcriminal defendants are sometimes available in plain sight andaccessible under a person's real name.
But in cases where they've had reason to suspect incriminatingpictures online, or have been tipped off to a particular person'sMySpace or Facebook page, the sites have yielded critical characterevidence.
"It's not possible to do it in every case," said Darryl Perlin, asenior prosecutor in Santa Barbara County, Calif. "But certaincases, it does become relevant."
Perlin said he was willing to recommend probation for Lara Buys fora drunken driving crash that killed her passenger last year —until he thought to check her MySpace page while preparing forsentencing.
The page featured photos of Buys — taken after the crash butbefore sentencing — holding a glass of wine as well as jokingcomments about drinking. Perlin used the photos to argue for a jailsentence instead of probation, and Buys, then 22, got two years inprison.
"Pending sentencing, you should be going to (Alcoholics Anonymous),you should be in therapy, you should be in a program to learn todeal with drinking and driving," Perlin said. "She was doingnothing other than having a good old time."
Santa Barbara defense lawyer Steve Balash said the day he met hisclient Jessica Binkerd, a recent college graduate charged with afatal drunken driving crash, he asked if she had a MySpace page.
When she said yes, he told her to take it down because he figuredit might have pictures that cast her in a bad light.
But she didn't remove the page. And right before Binkerd wassentenced in January 2007, the attorney said he was "blindsided" bya presentencing report from prosecutors that featured photos postedon MySpace after the crash.
One showed Binkerd holding a beer bottle. Others had her wearing ashirt advertising tequila and a belt bearing plastic shot glasses.
Binkerd wasn't doing anything illegal, but Balash said the photoshurt her anyway. She was given more than five years in prison,though the sentence was later shortened for unrelated reasons.
"When you take those pictures like that, it's a hell of an impact,"he said.
Rhode Island prosecutors say Lipton was drunk and speeding near hisschool, Bryant University in Smithfield, in October 2006 when hetriggered a three-car collision that left 20-year-old Jade Combieshospitalized for weeks.
Sullivan, the prosecutor, said another victim of the crash gave himcopies of photographs from Lipton's Facebook page that were postedafter the collision.
Sullivan assembled the pictures — which were posted bysomeone else but accessible on Lipton's page — into aPowerPoint presentation at sentencing.
One image shows a smiling Lipton at the Halloween party, clutchingcans of the energy drink Red Bull with his arm draped around ayoung woman in a sorority T-shirt.
Above it, Sullivan rhetorically wrote, "Remorseful?"
Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini said the prosecutor's slideshow influenced his decision to sentence Lipton.
"I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man wasfeeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thoughtit was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of goingto prison," the judge said in an interview.
Kevin Bristow, Lipton's attorney, said the photos didn't accuratelyreflect his client's character or level of remorse, and made itmore likely he'd get prison over probation.
"The pictures showed a kid who didn't know what to do two weeksafter this accident," Bristow said, adding that Lipton wroteapologetic letters to the victim and her family and was so upsetthat he left college. "He didn't know how to react."
Still, he uses the incident as an example to his own teenagechildren to watch what they post online.
"If it shows up under your name you own it," he said, "and youbetter understand that people look for that stuff."