e-Lessons Learned

When a police department loses its own videotape of the arrest of a citizen, and the evidence that was on that tape is a key issue in the case, the police department will face very serious sanctions that could be dispositive on the issue. In this civil litigation in which the key issue was whether excessive force was used during the arrest, the lost videotape would have showed the arrest and resolved the key issue in dispute. After weighing several factors, the Court imposed a dispositive sanction in which it designated that the police did use excessive force in the arrest.

Walter Peschel was arrested after a rather odd series of events. While tending the lawn at an apartment complex he owned, Peschel, a doctor, was asked to assist a tenant who sat in her car nearly unconscious from a prescription drug overdose, armed with a gun, and threatening to kill herself. Continue reading »

All content that you put on the internet, whether you think it is private or not, is out in the open and can be accessed by anyone. Think about some of things you may have on your MySpace or Facebook pages, or may have posted on your blog or might have tweeted. Do you want your boss or the police or the courts to see them? If not, you’d be wise to avoid posting anything that could expose you to the wrath of authorities.

In Clark v. State, police and prosecutors used statements on Ian Clark’s MySpace page to help convict him of first-degree murder. Granted, your dirty little secrets probably won’t end up as badly as Ian Clark’s, but why take any chances?

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