"D. Jesse Smith, a solo practitioner in Tucson, Ariz., said social networking sites can be helpful for defense lawyers. In a recent misdemeanor assault case, Smith said he was able to prove someone other than his client was the aggressor who started the fight because his MySpace page contained a video of him beating someone up."
"From all these statements in her account, we realized that she continued to be a danger to the community," said Perlin. "So the case went from being a probation case to a prison case and it was all a result of her MySpace account." Buys was sentenced to prison for two years.
And Matthew Cordova, who held up a student with a gun, was sentenced to five years in prison. Cordova had posted a picture of him holding the gun on his MySpace page, which, as attorney Jonathan Mosher said, "played a role in the sentencing."
"At a sentencing, they are trying to portray him as a guy who had found religion and was very peaceful and hadn't been in much trouble, so that's where we were able to use MySpace postings and photos," said Mosher.
According to Malbrough & Lirette secretary Joan Malbrough, who spends time every day "checking the online social networking sites":
"Every new client we do a MySpace and Facebook search on to see if they or their spouse have any useful information," said Malbrough. And it works. Because of a woman's "sexually explicit comments on her boyfriend's MySpace page," her husband was granted shared custody of their kids.
Judges agree too that MySpace and Facebook printouts will be treated like other electronic evidence—evidence that is becoming more and more powerful in the courtroom.
