Post Away...

Ya know, I'm usually very concerned with how people portray themselves on Facebook and MySpace. I hate the idea of anyone posting pics of them doing some goofy stunt that could later mean they won't get a job, etc. But when a guy like this rubs the victim's nose in his crime? It makes me re-think my position. So, post away! If it helps put unrepentant fools like this behind bars for longer than they'd have originally been sentenced to, post away!

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Web Photos Come Back to Bite Defendants
By ERIC TUCKER,
AP

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (July 19) - Two weeks after Joshua Lipton was charged in a drunken driving crash that seriously injured a woman, the 20-year-old college junior attended a Halloween party dressed as a prisoner. Pictures from the party showed him in a black-and-white striped shirt and an orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird."
In the age of the Internet, it might not be hard to guess what happened to those pictures: Someone posted them on the social networking site Facebook. And that offered remarkable evidence for Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor handling Lipton's drunken-driving case.
A judge gave Joshua Lipton a two-year prison sentence over a drunken driving charge after the prosecutor uncovered this image of Lipton dressed up in a "Jail Bird" costume two weeks after his accident that nearly killed a woman.

Sullivan used the pictures to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed, calling the pictures depraved when sentencing Lipton to two years in prison.

Online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace have offered crime-solving help to detectives and become a resource for employers vetting job applicants. Now the sites are proving fruitful for prosecutors, who have used damaging Internet photos of defendants to cast doubt on their character during sentencing hearings and argue for harsher punishment.
"Social networking sites are just another way that people say things or do things that come back and haunt them," said Phil Malone, director of the cyberlaw clinic at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. "The things that people say online or leave online are pretty permanent."

The pictures, when shown at sentencing, not only embarrass defendants but also can make it harder for them to convince a judge that they're remorseful or that their drunken behavior was an aberration. (Of course, the sites are also valuable for defense lawyers looking to dig up dirt to undercut the credibility of a star prosecution witness.)

Prosecutors do not appear to be scouring networking sites while preparing for every sentencing, even though telling photos of criminal defendants are sometimes available in plain sight and accessible under a person's real name. But in cases where they've had reason to suspect incriminating pictures online, or have been tipped off to a particular person's MySpace or Facebook page, the sites have yielded critical character evidence.

"It's not possible to do it in every case," said Darryl Perlin, a senior prosecutor in Santa Barbara County, Calif. "But certain cases, it does become relevant."

Perlin said he was willing to recommend probation for Lara Buys for a 2006 drunken driving crash that killed her passenger _ until he thought to check her MySpace page while preparing for sentencing.

The page featured photos of Buys _ taken after the crash but before sentencing _ holding a glass of wine as well as joking comments about drinking. Perlin used the photos to argue for a jail sentence instead of probation, and Buys, then 22, got two years in prison.

"Pending sentencing, you should be going to (Alcoholics Anonymous), you should be in therapy, you should be in a program to learn to deal with drinking and driving," Perlin said. "She was doing nothing other than having a good old time."

Santa Barbara defense lawyer Steve Balash said the day he met his client Jessica Binkerd, a recent college graduate charged with a fatal drunken driving crash, he asked if she had a MySpace page. When she said yes, he told her to take it down because he figured it might have pictures that cast her in a bad light.

But she didn't remove the page. And right before Binkerd was sentenced in January 2007, the attorney said he was "blindsided" by a presentencing report from prosecutors that featured photos posted on MySpace after the crash.

One showed Binkerd holding a beer bottle. Others had her wearing a shirt advertising tequila and a belt bearing plastic shot glasses.

Binkerd wasn't doing anything illegal, but Balash said the photos hurt 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 his school, Bryant University in Smithfield, in October 2006 when he triggered a three-car collision that left 20-year-old Jade Combies hospitalized for weeks.

Sullivan, the prosecutor, said another victim of the crash gave him copies of photographs from Lipton's Facebook page that were posted after the collision. Sullivan assembled the pictures _ which were posted by someone else but accessible on Lipton's page _ into a PowerPoint presentation at sentencing.

One image shows a smiling Lipton at the Halloween party, clutching cans of the energy drink Red Bull with his arm draped around a young woman in a sorority T-shirt. Above it, Sullivan rhetorically wrote, "Remorseful?"

Superior Court Judge Daniel Procaccini said the prosecutor's slide show influenced his decision to sentence Lipton.

"I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man was feeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thought it was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of going to prison," the judge said in an interview.

Kevin Bristow, Lipton's attorney, said the photos didn't accurately reflect his client's character or level of remorse, and made it more likely he'd get prison over probation.

"The pictures showed a kid who didn't know what to do two weeks after this accident," Bristow said, adding that Lipton wrote apologetic letters to the victim and her family and was so upset that he left college. "He didn't know how to react."

Still, he uses the incident as an example to his own teenage children to watch what they post online.

"If it shows up under your name you own it," he said, "and you better understand that people look for that stuff."

The JATY

Ya know, this isn't such a bad idea. Doubtful most Americans who'd drive drunk in the first place would own one, but that's the culture we've created here. In Korea? Maybe not so much. The skull and crossbones is a nice touch, too!


JATY DR7200: Breathalyzer and nav...all in one!

Posted Jul 16th 2008 7:02PM by Alex Nunez

This is the JATY DR7200 GPS, and it does a lot more than just tell you where you are and how to get where you're going on that 7-inch screen. You see, it's got an integrated breathalyzer, too, so it'll also tell you whether you should even be trying to get where you're going. Blow "over" and you get a standard BAC readout, a red "OVER" warning, and if that's not enough, a yellow skull and crossbones to drive home the point that, well, you really shouldn't be driving at all. In addition to all that, it supports just about every techno-acronym you can imagine (USB, MP3, DiVX, JPEG, MPEG, etc.), so if you're in no shape to drive, you can at least watch a movie on the thing while you wait it out. Want one? Just run on down to the local electronics store...in Korea.

DWI Will Make You Stupid and Poor

Just returned from my stepson's orientation and registration at the University of Florida. One of the sessions for students and parents alike was on alcohol and UF's policy concerning infractions dealing with alcohol.

If you ask people why they're going to college, you'll likely get the answers:

1. To get an education

and

2. To get a good job

Money and smarts – the two biggest reasons people choose to continue their education. While at the alcohol seminar at UF, there was a DWI deterrent I'd never before considered...

If a UF student gets a DWI on campus, he/she is immediately suspended. The semester's classes? Gone. They'll possibly get to start back the following semester.

One thing UF talked about is tracking; i.e., is a student on track in his/her chosen field of study. For instance, if a student is tracking, he/she will have their pre-reqs in order and they're on track to get their diploma in the correct amount of time. Due to how classes are arranged, if one gets a DWI, tracking becomes impossible.

For instance, let's say an engineering student needs to take trig. Trig is only offered in the fall semester (this is just a "for example", folks). If that student is pulling an A in the class and it's two days before the final exam, if the student gets a DWI on campus, BAM! Everything from that semester is gone. Next semester doesn't offer trig. The student will, in all likelihood, now be one year behind. No longer on track, the student will have the double whammy of paying the DWI, increased insurance rates and they now have a black mark on their criminal record which won't be looked on favorably by employers.

College students are known for partying and alcohol consumption. While that reputation is deserved by approx. 20% of college students, the deterrent UF has for combating DWI on its campus is a great, great way to help students stay on track.

"SAFER?"

SAFER: Safer Alternatives for Enjoyable Recreation

Yeah, right. This is an org who's main mission is to allow passengers to smoke marijuana to reduce anxiety before commercial flights. Specifically, in the Denver. Their argument (which is rational) is that marijuana consumption is simply not linked with aggressive and violent behavior like alcohol is. True enough, but SAFER would be a lot more likely to see the reformation of marijuana laws if (gasp!) they actually worked to reform marijuana laws! Right now, they're advocating for an illegal drug to be illegally consumed in a public place. THAT is the sort of thing that can lead to some dangerous situations. Next thing you know, someone is anxious before a flight, they step into the weed lounge, buy a joint off the illegal drug dealer and start hitting it. Thing is, that drug isn't regulated and could easily be laced with any number of illegal substances besides marijuana.

Look, SAFER, you have a point about your drug of choice. But you're going about it in the totally wrong way. As with anything, we're Americans, we're guaranteed freedom of speech and we should exercise that right to try to change laws if we feel those laws need to be altered. But c'mon! This? Not even close...though it would give new meaning to The Mile High Club.

Marcus is a Wii character?

My buddy, Kyle Kuhlman, just sent me this picture of a guy who, strangely enough, bears a close resemblence to moi! Here's his note that went with it:

Hey Marcus, I just got the Wii and made up a player of myself on the sports program. I put in all the attributes of myself, pulled up the picture and it looks remarkably like you.

So, faithful reader, what do you think? I'm a little disturbed that Wii has turned me into a video game character!

Drunk Mommy

A Polish woman was recently arrested after showing up at the hospital in the delivery process. Why the cuffs? Because her blood alcohol concentration was .12 (that's the equivalent of a six pack of beer, minimum.) Her baby was delivered with a BAC of .29-a level over three times the U.S. legal limit for DWI, if that gives you an idea of the amount of booze this poor baby had.

The mother could face up to five years in prison for child endangerment, even though physicians say the baby seems to be doing fine.

Is there anything more selfish than a mother who can't put down the booze or the crack pipe or the needle? Or, is it not selfishness and simply addiction? Either way, let's weigh this out... a child may suffer a lifetime from fetal alcohol syndrome... but the mom who did that to the child gets only five years max in the slammer?

A person can slap a child and be charged with battery, but a child being forced to drink it's mother's booze gets no choice. Just terribly sad.

I think most people are advanced enough to understand alcohol consumption during pregnancy is wrong. If not, let this Polish woman's situation be a reminder – when one is pregnant, they have a simple duty: protect the baby at all costs. Someone needs to get the memo to this mom.

"Super Potent Legal Bud"

Someone just posted an advertisement to my wall on my Facebook profile...and it's someone who doesn't know me very well! The message said:

"Hey Marcus, want to get high without breaking any of the existing laws? Get some super potent legal bud here!"

Then gives the URL for a site that sells the stuff.

Honestly, I'm a little intrigued because, well, anything to do with substances is on my radar due to my career. When I was a wee lad and hanging out in head shops and the like, I remember seeing a book called "Natural Highs." It gave recipes for concoctions one could make of roadside flowers and weeds, mixed with certain kinds of herbs and oils to create an intoxicating substance. Thankfully, they not only gave the recipes for this junk, but also the potential side effects (some of which included, oh, respiratory arrest) and symptoms to watch for if something went wrong.

People are always going to look for ways to get intoxicated. The fermenting of wine goes back thousands of years, as we all know. And it seems like every few years, a new street drug comes out that's more potent and deadly than the last.

I am very, very leery of companies which promote drug use in a "safe and legal" manner because so often, it's not safe and legal. This advertisement showed up on my facebook profile-unsolicited- and falls right into the hands of me, a guy who works in the prevention field. Yet, facebook is primarily utilized by those in the college years, so this is hitting the hands of young adults everywhere.

Parents have a hard enough time policing the net to keep their young kids safe, but this sorta advertising calls upon the sensibility of the recipient. People who get this advertising shoved in their face have to be wise enough to understand there is not safe and legal ways to do drugs-that's why they're called "drugs."

Be on the lookout for things like this...and be sure your finger is ready to hit the delete button when they show up!