By ERIC TUCKER Associated Press Writer
PROVIDENCE, R.I. July 19, 2008 (AP)
The Associated Press
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This photo released by the State of Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General shows Joshua Lipton,...
This photo released by the State of Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General shows Joshua Lipton, right, posing at a 2006 Halloween party while wearing a prisoner costume of a striped shirt and orange jumpsuit labeled "Jail Bird." The photo was made two weeks after Lipton was charged in a drunk driving car crash that seriously injured a woman. It was posted on the social networking Web site Facebook, which made it available to the prosecutor who used the image to paint Lipton as an unrepentant partier who lived it up while his victim recovered in the hospital. A judge agreed and sentenced Lipton in May 2008 to two years in prison. (AP Photo/State of Rhode Island Office of the Attorney General)
(AP)
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.
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.
