Failing via Facebook
The juror who admitted using Facebook to contact a defendant during an Old Bailey multi-million pound drugs trial, causing the trial to collapse, has been sentenced to eight months in prison.
During the trial, forty year old Joanne Fraill used Facebook to contact Jamie Sewart, who had been acquitted the day before, and discussed sensitive details of the ongoing deliberations of the jury. Also in defiance of the rules, she conducted internet searches on Sewart's boyfriend, Gary Knox, who had not been acquitted. Eight months for stupidity seems harsh, especially when you consider that people receive lesser sentences for burglary, and that Fraill made no financial gain out of this. On the other hand, she clearly knew the implications of what she was doing as revealed in one of her messages which read "Pleeese don't say anything cause Jamie they could miss trial and I'll get 4cked too".
This though pales into insignificance compared to the stupidity of a Philidelphia woman who used Facebook to try to recruit a hitman for a contract on her husband. Twenty year old Eley London posted "I will pay somebody a stack to kill my baby father" and eighteen year old Timothy Bynum replied with the even less literate "say no more, what he look like? where he be at, need dat stack 1st, ima mop that bull".
The plan came undone when London's mother-in-law spotted the request. Police raided Bynum's home and found a loaded handgun with obliterated serial number. Philadelphia Policeman, John Walker, told ABC "It's shocking that people are just so stupid." I think he was referring to the plan, not the spelling.
24th June 2011