Trial by twitter.

[grouch]

I don't text. I feel it's demeaning and wastes time when something useful could be done. I've noticed people will post texts with little forethought and without regard to what happens. In short, it's too easy.

Currently, Bill Cosby is going through trial by twitter. More and more women are making accusations about him. Maybe he did it and maybe they just want to get some money from him. Not one charge has been filed in either criminal or civil court. Until he has his day in court, he is innocent in this country. Look at recent pictures posted of him. They are getting to be as unflattering as it's possible to get and stay on the internet. Where he used to be pictured in suit and clean shaven, now it's a rheumy eye and several days growth of beard. In the same way, if I were to win several hundred million dollars in the lottery, I imagine many ex-girlfriends will show up on my door. Some of them I may actually have dated at one time. There is a convicted sex offender down south who won 3,000,000 and peole say because he is a convicted felon, he shouldn't get the money. If he did the time and is full filling the conditions of parole, why should he?

This also backfires when something really should be done. Current events in Ferguson will probably go the way of Florida. The same in Cleveland. People will tweet back and forth and post on social media without regard to English Common Law which is the basis of our legal system. It goes back to the Magna Carta in the 1200's. Unlike Napoleonic Law like in Mexico, France and Italy, guilt must be proven rather than the French way of guilty unless you can prove otherwise.

In the 1960's, the Rolling Stones had a concert in Altamont California. Long before twitter. They hired the local Hell's Angles chapter to provide security. It would seem to be an odd choice due to the temperament of the average member, but that's neither here nor there. One of the Hell's Angles stabbed a man to death. Oh terrible. Obviously he's guilty because he's a Hell's Angel. He was tried for murder. He was acquited. Why? The man he stabbed had a pistol and was trying to shoot him. This is a case where our legal system acted as it was intended. Personally, someone taking a knife to a gun fight and winning is one tough son of a gun.

In Cleveland a police officer shoots a 12 year old child with a pellet gun that has had the orange tips removed. In other words, it looked like a real pistol. Maybe the officer acted in haste when he shot the kid as he was pulling the gun out of his belt. On the other hand, what if it was a real pistol and the hesitation meant the officer got shot?

Let's go back in time and see how trial by twitter stops justice. Treyvon Martin was shot by Zimmerman. That much is well known. Maybe Mr. Martin wasn't an angel. Very few teenagers are. His only crime at the time was walking through a neighborhood armed with a bag of skittles. He was jumped by someone and fought back. He ended up getting shot.Maybe it wasn't murder, but to me, it was an open and shut case of manslaughter. However, Zimmerman walked. Why? Big names in Civil Rights showed up demanding justice. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and so on. Of course, by getting in front of the cameras, they added to their own prestige. Rap stars put out tweets that were supposed to give the address of Zimmerman. Oops, wrong address. All of a sudden, people with no connection to the case are getting death threats. Zimmerman was acquited and I don't doubt the protests influenced the jury. The Martin family may be able to file a wrongfull death suit but the man who shot their son walked.

[Ken]

I find all these so called 'Social media' web-sites both infantile and puerile. Sadly the ability to be able to post anything one feels like posting seems to be becoming a necessity rather than an occasional bit of fun. More and more vicious trolls are destroying the lives of innocent people purely for their own personal perverted pleasure. The ability to hide behind a screen name seems to give them a protection that should never have been permitted. I am convinced that these media can play a large part in perverting justice.

On a lighter note, the other day I saw a large car stop outside a big store. Out of the car got three young women, each had a cell phone in her hand, each had a thumb moving furiously over the keypad and that was how they walked into the store, one behind the other each apparently oblivious to her friend/sibling in front of her - if only they had realised just how ridiculous they looked.

I entirely agree with your sentiments, Grouch. Facebook, Twitter, et al, somehow seem to have twisted our current law of 'Innocent until proven guilty' out of all recognition. Time and time again people who have been arrested 'on suspicion' but who have not even charged let alone faced trial are threatened with violence, or worse, by mindless, unthinking yobs who seem to assume that, because someone has been arrested they are automatically guilty.

Ken.