Fianna Fáil Fingal TD Darragh O’Brien
Darragh O’Brien actually said in Dail that the jury was intimidated by tweets in the #JobstownNotGuilty trial. Is that the best you can do?
— Paul Murphy (@paulmurphy_TD) July 5, 2017
Ah here.
Rollingnews
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*helen Lovejoy pic*
Won’t someone please think of the poor jury!
Desperate whinger.
I hate this story. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves, left, right , everyone.
Another pathetic attempt by the right wingers to smear the left, you can almost smell the fear from the establishment.
What an arch scumbag. Insults the jury, insults the defendants, insults our legal system and insults the intelligence of the Irish people all because he didn’t get to see innocent people sent down on fake kidnapping charges …..and because? Politics. Life is cheap when it comes to getting in political digs it seems. These people were found innocent. In fact it’s starting to look like we may need an inquiry into how these trumped up phony charges got to court in the first place. Stop playing politics with peoples lives. They’re innocent and you are suggesting that they are not. Who are FG to make that judgement above a jury, judge and court? It’s a wonder he didn’t invoke the Russians hacking the minds of the jury with Tweets! General election time. PLEASE!!!!!
He is FF not FG
What was the point of the tweets, if not to change minds?
How can you “change minds” of a jury who hadn’t made up theirs? Anyway, it was the gardai’s own evidence that proved there was no false imprisonment and absolutely nothing to do with a hashtag.
the big gob gombeen gimp head on him
Ingrid should have accidently
smacked him
like yer man Sagon with the elbow
‘Accidentally’ you mean.
it was no accident and you know it
Same diff
At it again, I see.
Another puffed up, quisling, sackapoo, eager to keep the natives down, adds his two pen’orth. He can shove it, and I demand the right NOT to contribute to his pension (or Regina’s, or Michelle’s or a host of others). He and his ilk have spat on me too long.
An ‘ annuder angry man
there’s a lot more to the sheik than just anger, in fairness
one of BS’s diamonds, I’d say
Ah yeah
No denying that
It’s just
Ya know
The theme of the thread
don’t make me come down there, frillz
Or you’ll wha’
New balls please.
yes please.
Fathead
What’s up?
My uncle Steve also answers to that…
You’re not uncle Steve, are you?
No but I am AN uncle and we do use “fathead” as a term of affection in our family :)
I’ll start by saying this trial should not have been taken, lest anyone rip me to shreds.
While everyone runs around defending the right to tweet, there are very good reasons why these rules exist. Restrictions on reporting of cases exist to protect justice. Intimidation of jury’s or incorrectly influencing juries is a real issue in juries around the world. As a society we have been strong in our determination to keep TV cameras out of courts – for good reason. I wouldn’t share the td’s use of the word intimidation, but a jury could be influenced by a twitter campaign. If you don’t think that’s a problem, imagine some big business man called Denis was paying for that campaign and tvfink what your reaction would be. Once you change the rules for one side you change them for everyone.
You’ve a point. I think the issue of regulating social media is farcical though.
In this case, the issue of alleged “intimidation” (I haven’t seen any examples of it put forward) is implying the jury got it wrong. That’s what all these TDs are really saying. It was clear from the Judge’s summing up that there really wasn’t a case. The TDs are saying that it had nothing to do with the evidence but that the jury was intimidated. Another very serious accusation. An extraordinary claim that requires evidence before we jump into policy change.
Isn’t the solution simple though? More simple than criminalising people for commenting on social media (essentially the same conversation they would have offline). Jurors are told not to talk about a case and to avoid media coverage of the case. Ask them to avoid social media too. If you find a juror has been on social media, treat them the same as if you found they’d been reading newspaper coverage or talking about a case with someone else.
These politicians are annoyed that the stupid public was able to see the already available video footage that showed the state was lying in its case and are embarrassed.
The extent to which they are finding a scapegoat to imply that the decision was wrong shows that this was a political prosecution.
I agree with Cecil’s point – that Social Media could influence a jury (again NOT talking about Jobstown trial).
Listrade says: “Jurors are told not to talk about a case and to avoid media coverage of the case. Ask them to avoid social media too. ”
But Social Media and the traditional Media are different
– traditional media is careful about how it reports on-going cases, social media has no restrictions. So if I do read something about my trial the traditional media is likely to be, ahem, less ‘harmful’.
– it is easier to avoid traditional media coverage [on a trial] than Social Media. I can avoid reading specific pages of the paper; or not listen/watch the news. But it is impossible to filter specific content on Facebook, twitter, etc. unless I completely avoid it for the duration.
Saying that, I’m not sure how this could be monitored/policed.
That’s because we view social media in the same way as the “media”. It isn’t. It’s closer to day-to-day social interaction.
The rules should therefore be the similar to the rules of a juror not having a conversation about the trial. How can you stop a Juror overhearing a conversation on a bus about the trial? You can’t. You can’t control the social dialogue that goes on around a juror, you just have to trust the juror to not let it affect their decision and to not engage in the discussion.
It wouldn’t be difficult to say that they should avoid social media for the length of the trial. It would be easy to know if they had been on to some extent based on posting, likes, etc. The fact that they may be skimming through without engagement is as difficult to control as it is them overhearing comments in public.
We don’t lock up jurors for the day to stop them engaging in social dialogue. We tell them not to and if it is shown that they did, there are consequences. I don’t see the need for anything more for social media.
Tweets and comments that do breach court rules should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The problem I see is that there is a suggestion that there have been these posts and tweets without examples. Publish the examples. Prove in a court that they were in breach.
Of course the media are all over this, anything that is against their greatest competition (social media) they always jump over. Where are the journalistic principles when the spend weeks and months before a trial effectively portraying the accused in as negative a light as possible and digging up as much dirt as possible?
Not just this case, the same could be said of Graham Dwyer. He did it. He is a murderer. But the media went crazy leading up to the trial with details of his extra-marital affairs. How does that scale of coverage on a daily basis not influence the jury? The answer is simple, we trust the jury to listen to the evidence.
So that’s my position. If we are to have inquiry into social media, great, give us some examples and we’ll look at them. Don’t just give me hints, give me examples. But we should also include all those media outlets who suddenly remember their journalism training and that there are rules.Yeah, rules when it suits you. You only start the rules when the trial starts. You only publish detailed accounts of the prosecution, you get a bit less noisy when it’s the defence.
Or we could just admit that this whole “intimidation” thing is a complete smokescreen with no evidence. It takes away from the issue of the garda evidence and how so many statements can say the same thing about Paul Murphy yet be shown to be completely false by video posted on social media…now that’s what’s really annoying them.
I agree with most of what you’re saying (although I’m avoiding Jobstown trail specifics).
While social media is closer to day-to-day social interaction it can be manipulated more easily than other social interactions.
If I wanted to influence a juror I could either
a) ‘arrange’ for a group of actors to use the same bus as my juror and hope she isn’t on her Walkman and that she eavesdrops on their influential conversation.
b) write twitter comments to people she is following. Start some Facebook discussions with people that she is friends with. Post to broadsheet where I know she reads all the comments.
again, I don’t know if/how it could be policed:
“Tweets and comments that do breach court rules should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.” The difficulty with this (for me, and I assume the majority of people) is I may inadvertently post something that breaches court rules.
@ Cian.
How do we know who the jurors are to manipulate them? We aren’t supposed to know, so how could anything be directed at them personally to intimidate them. They could read comments on broadsheet or elsewhere, but again, tell them not to, just as we do with avoiding print, tv and radio media. They all discuss the day in court, usually going over the prosecution’s evidence. Except their reporting is selective, only giving the stuff that is (usually salacious). they have their rules, but they run really close to the line.
If we can trust a jury to either avoid print, tv and radio coverage, then we can trust them to avoid online. It’s that easy.
If we are to have an investigation into social media during a trial, then we need one on the “MSN” reporting before and during a trial.
How much debate on how the accused were portrayed by the media would we have by the government and main newsources if it had been a guilty verdict?
I’m not sure outside of BS and a few angry people on social media, we would have any of this.
@Listrade
Can I turn this around? Do you think that the traditional media should have any restrictions on what they report during a trial?
– if not: should we remove any and all reporting restrictions and just trust the jury to avoid any coverage across all media?
– if so: should we attempt to apply these same restrictions to all media?
So tweets are a danger to the justice system after the mass media spent two years smearing the seven accused!
If I was on the jury I would have been intimidated, not by the tweets, but by everything that surrounded this trial. Both side were intimidating. One one side you have clear garda corruption, and the other borderline mob rule.
Can we say that an innocent verdict has not put the jury on some unspoken garda list? And can we say that a guilty verdict would not have resulted in jury members being ostracized from society? God forbid they lived anywhere near Jobstown.
He’s right, there was intimidation, not by any tweets, but the trial itself.
is that not true of any (high-profile) trial? if you return an innocent verdict this means you didn’t agree with the prosecution (usually the Guards). If you return guilty you didn’t agree with the defence.
Fair question. I did ask myself if I would have been intimidated in other trials, but if its a person vs a person, or a person v a body / state, I think there would be less intimidation. Plenty of examples against me, I’m sure, but this had intimidation possible on both sides. A group, far bigger then 6, against a party a + the guards.
In any country (bar perhaps the Nordics / Iceland / Canada.. ?) you don’t want the to piss the cops off. My grandfather used say “fear the wrath of the guards” – and sure look at McCabe.