MSNBC has a lot of faults, and I'm not recommending it, but they dealt
with this for 3 or 4 minutes today.
They said it caused a temporary frenzy (somewhere, I forget where.)
More inline.
In misc.legal.moderated, on Fri, 7 Jun 2024 23:10:19 -0700 (PDT), "Rick" <
rick@nospam.com> wrote:
The judge in the Trump case issued a letter today (Friday) to the attorneys >on both sides stating that on the day before the verdict was read, someone >posted a message on Facebook claiming he was related to a juror on the case >who told him Trump would be found guilty. As quoted on nbcnews.com, the >judge's letter stated:
“Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified >Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your
attention." The letter quoted the Facebook post as stating:
“My cousin is a juror and said Trump is getting convicted....Thank you folks >for all your hard work!!!!”
Obviously, the poster could be lying and not a relative. Or he could legit >be a relative and was lying about discussing the case with his relative.
The post has been deleted, but the poster was known and his profile
describes himself a "professional [trash] poster" where trash was some
vulgar word that the news would not repeat, but apparently it means he
just likes to post disruptive stuff.
But the post could also be true. The question is what happens now? >Presumably there will be some kind of investigation, which I presume will >involving tracking down the poster (identified as Michael Anderson) to >determine whether he is really related to the juror and if the post was >accurate. And if the poster is indeed shown to be a relative of the juror,
I presume the juror would also be questioned. This raises a few
questions:
1) Who will do the investigation? Does the judge do this or is up to the >attorneys? Do the police get involved?
Good questions. Facebook has bragged that everyone is registered under
their real name***, but I'm not and neither is my friend. She's
registered under her real name too. I only registered because I
thought I was having trouble reading someone's FB page and I thought
maybe it was because I wasn't registered, but I'd already learned on
usenet not to use my real name.
***"Facebook is a community where everyone uses the name they use in
everyday life. This makes it so that you always know who you're
connecting with. What isn't allowed?"
"We ask for an ID so that we don't let anyone into your account except
for you. Confirming your name: We ask everyone on Facebook to use the
name they go by in everyday life. This helps keep you and our community
safe from impersonation." They actually ask for your driver's license,
but I would think that can contradict "the name they use in everday
life".
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/facebook-id/
As of 30 March 2014, will Facebook be requiring that all account holders provide a photocopy of their personal ID? -- "Facebook will be
requiring all users to send in a photocopy of their drivers
license/personal id. to verify their identity. All users who fail to do
so will have their accounts deleted. Users whose account names do not
match the name on their id will be deleted as well.
But Snopes says this is false. "The message is just a hoax, yet another
entry in a series of similar japes proclaiming that Facebook is
launching a "no swearing" campaign or a no marijuana campaign. "
Last updated: 7 March 2014
So anyone who joined before 2014, and that was millions I think can
still belong.
OTOH, after Sept. 2019, only 5 years ago, it seems to be a different
story.
https://www.idtheftcenter.org/post/facebooks-real-name-policy-asks-for-personal-identification/
Facebook’s “Real-Name” Policy Asks for Personal Identification
Date: 09/20/2019 The Identity Theft Resource Center.
"Facebook asks for PII that either includes your name and birth date or
name and photograph. This could be a driver’s license, birth
certificate, passport, green card or a tax identification card (view the
full list here). If you do not want to send Facebook one of the items
listed above for personal identification, you do have the option to send additional documentation like bank statements, credit cards, medical
records, military IDs, religious documents or a social welfare card. You
must provide two documents from this list, and Facebook still might
require photo and birth date documentation."
I haven't been asked to send them anything.
What's interesting and I did not expect, is that I'm able to log into to
lots of other webpages by using my FB ID, fake as it is. It's very
convenient because I wouldn't give all those places my real name either.
Things like the Toyota forum, the plumber's forum, the electrician's
forum. They don't need my real name. Neither does FB.
And I don't consider myself that cautious. I don't care about tracking
in my web browser, I don't use private web-browsing, I don't erase my
history, I keep even my bank passwords in my computer (though in a
separate email mailbox, and I abbreviate the bank names to 2 characters
and re-punctuate the account numbers as phone-numbers, and on the laptop
only I finally took passwords dealing with money and put them in a
different file which I encrypted using Libre Office (very, very easy.
Hard part is remembering the file name and the password), but that was
only my laptop and only when I heard basically 10-year old news, no
longer true, stories about how dangerous Guatemala is. (My passport,
phone, and one credit and one debit card were stolen when I parked near
an entertainment part of Athens, Greece, and afaict, the credit and
debit cards were not used, and I never kept passwords dealing with money
in my phone.
American passports are still supposed to be valuable but with computers
at every entry point I don't see how they can be very valuable. ?? I
got there at 9 and had a new passport from the Consulate/Embassy in
Athens by 1PM on Monday. It would have been quicker maybe but their
picture machine was broken and we all had to go a few blocks to a
photographer. They did them in order of who was planning to leave
first. One couple had tickets for 4 PM and they had their passports
before noon. My ticket was for that night. (Someone I barely knew
lent me $200 to live on from Friday night.)
Can't they, with a warrant?, find who the real person is based on the IP address? I suppose.
2) If the evidence shows the poster is indeed a relative of the juror, and
Most people in the world are not related to a juror, but a few are.
if the juror admits to discussing the case with the relative, does the judge >declare a mistrial at that point?
The post didnt' appear until after part of 1 day of deliberations. It
could have been pretty clear by then that he would be convicted. So it
doesn't show that the jury discussed it before they were allowed to, or
that they read external news when they weren't allowed to, and it
doesn't imply that anyone pressured a juror, things that might cause a
problem, only that one juror blabbed to someone, who was so stupid he
posted it
If the juror admits to being a relative
but denies talking about the case with his relative, does it just end there? >Or will the judge perhaps still declare a mistrial because of the appearance >of impropriety due to the relative's comment?
Andrew Weissman who is on the network a lot says that's its pretty rare
a trial went this long without a problem, such as a juror being removed
and replaced or some other issue.
But trump has already posts "mistrial", and Sean Hannity says, if this
is not a reason enough for a mistrial, I don't know what is. He's
right, he doesn't know much.
And there are plenty of the ignorant horde that already supports trump
that have no idea what will cause a mistrial and what won't, and though
they could think about it and evaluate it something like I did above,
they won't. Unless that poster intentionally want to help trump, he's
a real jackass.
3) The judge apparently just learned of the problem today, several days >after the verdict was read and the jurors released. What would have
happened if the judge had learned of this in real time while the jury was >deliberating? Would they have brought a juror in while deliberating, or >would the judge have waited until the verdict was announced and then started >the investigation right at that time while the jury was still in court?
The judge can replace a juror during deliberations and then the jury has
to start from the beginning again. Since they made the jury wait a
week from iirc closing arguments before they hear jury instructions, I
guess they could also wait a few day while they track down the FB
poster, but first they would probably ask each of them if he
communicated with to the FB poster, and I expect one would admit it if
he did. So that would only take an hour, and they'd only been
deliberating for 3 or 4 hours, but I don't think even the worst version
of the facts warrant replacing anyone.
--
I think you can tell, but just to be sure:
I am not a lawyer.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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